The BBC released the results of its annual global survey of countries and how their influence is viewed around the world by respondents. The poll asked people in 27 countries which countries have a negative, neutral or positive impact on global events.
Germany was seen by a majority of respondents as being the most positively viewed country, followed by the UK, Japan and Canada. Positive views of the US increased to 49%, versus 31% negative, an increase of four points favorable from 2010 survey. Iran was seen by a majority of respondents as the most negative country, followed by Pakistan and North Korea also viewed negatively by a majority of world opinion.
Participants were asked in a questionnaire, "Please tell me if you think each of the following countries is having a mainly positive or mainly negative influence in the world," giving the options "mainly positive, mainly negative, depends" and "neutral."
The order of popularity of the 16 countries, based on 27 countries that were surveyed, was Germany, UK, Japan, Canada, France, U.S., Brazil, China, South Africa, India, South Korea, Russia, Israel, Pakistan, North Korea, and Iran.
Like the US positive views of Israel increased, but among US respondents negative views of Israel increased to 41%, up 10% from the 2010 survey.
Despite Israel's extremely low ranking, it has actually made a slight improvement in its world standing since 2010, and a more significant improvement since 2007. According to the poll, positive views of Israel increased by 2% while negative views remained mostly same as in 2010.
However, while positive ratings by the U.S. have remained stable in the poll since 2010 at about 43%, many more Americans chose to rate Israel negatively in 2011, marking an increase of 10% since 2010.
http://www.haaretz.com/...
In the US, Iran was seen as a negative by 87% of respondents, and by 59% of global respondents to the survey.
In the Middle East, respondents in Turkey and Egypt viewed the US and Israel with high negatives, despite their increase in positives by global respondents overall.
More information on the poll can be found at the pdf link below, including the methodology and country-specific data as well.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/...