[criley]

Because the headline is written according to the expected understanding of the American reader.

"Ivory Coast" is about as descriptive to an American audience as "Africa". I would be shocked if more than a tiny minority of Americans could tell you where the Ivory Coast was outside of "Africa", and I bet many wouldn't even know to place it in Africa, thinking maybe it's in India or SE Asia or something.

It's written like that because Americans don't know and don't really care about African geography.

>If this was in Lebanon would we be reading "Asian Bus Routes Redrawn using Cell-Phone Data"?

We'd probably see "Middle-East", the understood name for that region. We might even see "Lebanon" since its close to Israel and Americans like to feel involved in that scene.

[trailfox]

>Because the headline is written according to the expected understanding of the American reader.

Not exactly a high bar it seems...

[freehunter]

Can you tell me where every country in the world is?

[stephenhuey]

Can you use Google? :) Not meaning to offend! As someone who grew up in an African nation, I will easily concede to some of the parents in this thread that it's often just easier to get people's attention if you use something recognizable in a news headline. That being said, it is odd to me that it's the MIT Technology Review doing it in an age when anyone can double-click a string of text in the browser, e.g. Ivory Coast, and use the right-click menu to search with Google. Or copy and paste into their favorite search engine and instantly find out where the place is located with a string of search results and a map embedded into the page...

[freehunter]

Here's the real kicker: if I don't know where the country is, why would I care enough to google it? "Africa" in this situation gives me more info than the name of the country would.

[stephenhuey]

You never look up things you don't recognize? I care to look things up every day, and before the web I used physical dictionaries and encyclopedias on a frequent basis. Some people may never feel that inquisitive, but quite a lot of us are, and I'd imagine most people on HN are like that.

[freehunter]

There's a lot of articles posted to HN every day that I don't understand. If I researched them all, I'd have no time to actually do something productive. I skip them and move on unless something else about it catches my eye.

[trailfox]

Most of them, yes. Most 12 year olds from my country are taught the names of all countries in the world and where to find them on a map and the names of the capital cities.

[freehunter]

The I guess I'm less intelligent than most of the 12 year old kids in your country, because to be honest there's more relevant things I still have yet to learn before I get around to memorizing the name, location, and capital city of all 195(?) nations in the world and keep this information updated in my mind when, for example, a regime change in Central Africa means the name of the country is now different or what was one country is now two.

I should have your middle schoolers tutor me.

[trailfox]

>I guess I'm less intelligent than most of the 12 year old kids in your country

I think you just hit the nail on the head.

[kbenson]

It depends on the cultural consciousness, and whether that region has been subject to major news for recent generations. The Middle East and much of North-east Africa has has had the (mis)fortune of being in the US media for some time. For example, most US residents will know at least generally where Afghanistan is (some will know REALLY well), while I expect most don't really know where Luxembourg or Belarus are.