The global study, conducted by Depot, polled 200 affluent professionals each in Singapore, Hong Kong and India, along with 272 respondents in Europe. It found that - in the manner of entertainment programming - international news content inspires a particular set of beliefs and reactions among its consumers. According to BBC World head of research, Jeremy Nye, it is a relationship that has traditionally been overlooked, due to an over-reliance on quantitative data.
"The relationship that viewers have with news is the same sort of relationship that people have with other programmes," said Nye. "As with other genres of TV, news can have a large or small impact on viewers depending on the person, and the type of news. And remember, all these qualitative elements are missing from the eyeball data available."
In particular, Nye points to a key finding: that news delivers a powerful sense of "belonging" to its viewers.
"It's a bit like personal hygiene," he said. "You can get a bit overwhelmed by it but, on the other hand, if you asked someone to go a week without it, then people get uncomfortable. It serves a purpose in helping people to take part in the world, or in their community."
Different types of news, furthermore, deliver different types of belonging.
While analysis confers status, basic functional news such as travel, weather, and financial markets updates, are needed just to operate.
"There's also a hunger for more 'thinking' news," said Nye.
The research also demonstrates that viewers respond to news in different ways at different times as the day passes. "In the morning, they want to know the lay of the land, like meerkats peeking out to see if there's any danger," said Nye. "By the evening, viewers are ready to relax, and to absorb more in-depth news programming. Clearly, advertisers' different messages will work in different ways and at different times."
In addition, the research uncovered that international consumers look to international news as a means of validating their professional and cosmopolitan status.
"Part of it concerns people's sense of who they are and how they have arrived professionally," Nye noted. "Another part concerns what type of people they are. Essentially, the extent of their intellectual and social liberalism - and how cosmopolitan they are - is expressed through their interest in international news."
Nye added that standard measurement methods ignore the manner in which viewers engage with TV. For example, MTV viewers share values and affiliations; sports lovers share the moment; and news is seen as TV which can change the world.