ROME - Whether perceived as exotic and exciting or dangerous and drug-fuelled, Latin America still remains as an unknown, an anomaly, for many a European.

  An inequity between a Latin American's knowledge about Europe and a European's knowledge about Latin America, can come down to an inequity in the regions' news coverage about their counterparts, as underlined by a new study published by Mediatrends America and Prestomedia.

  The study named An atlas of the interests between the European Union and Latin America and the Caribbean: Contrasts in the magnitudes of interest levels between the two regions, presented in Rome Thursday by Roberto Mantoya and Sergio Mora, documents the awareness of Latin America in Europe and vice versa, and confirms the idea that whilst the European Union is constantly covered in the Latin American press, the same cannot be said conversely.

  Mantoya and Mora cite the current European migration and economic crises as possible reasons as to why Europe does not interest itself in Latin America and the Caribbean.

  When looking at a breakdown of the statistics, it is easy to note that on a country by country basis, Latin America is much more interested in European countries than vice versa. A significant 66 percent of Latin American and Caribbean countries was more interested in their European counterparts than the other way around. However, the UK broke this pattern, statistics demonstrating that more attention was given by the UK to Latin American countries, than these countries gave to the UK.

  The survey also looked at news coverage in the two regions and found that the two main topics written about in both regions, when concerning its counterpart, were international relations and economics and finance. However, it is worth noting that Latin America and the Caribbean had a much greater percentage in the interests given to these areas with 29% and 13% respectively, whereas Europe's percentages were not so concentrated in these areas. European news coverage also focused on culture, society and security - topics that hardly featured at all amongst the Latin American news coverage on Europe. Montoya and Mora suggest that these differences expose "a huge difference in the mentalities" of the two regions.

  When looking at Latin American and Caribbean news coverage, the study demonstrated that the continent focused very much on six European countries, with 57.4 percent of interests lying in Spain, France, Italy, Germany, the UK and Portugal. Europe's interests in Latin America and the Caribbean were much more evenly spread, however when looking at the statistics Mexico and Brazil won slightly more attention than the rest.

  Unsurprising, Spain topped the lists of Latin American interests, owing undoubtedly to the shared language and history. Rajoy was the most followed European leader in the Latin American press, and Madrid and Barcelona were the cities of most interest. London followed in third. Whether due to the current pope being Argentian, to football, or to the large Italian populations in Latin America, Italy was the second country to receive the most media interest, after Spain.