Where you appear to stand changes the answer.
With web search on, asking the same sovereignty question from a different location changes which sources get retrieved, and sometimes the answer. We report both: the stance and the citation set each vantage pulled.
The contested questions, ranked
Each row is one disputed territory. The dot marks where the models land; the bar is how far that answer moves as you ask from United States, China, India, Russia, Pakistan, or Israel. Ranked by that swing. Click a row to open it.
Across all 11, vantage moves the stance by 0.19 on a −1 to +1 scale, only South China Sea and Taiwan swing past 0.25. Rows ranked by that swing.
South China Sea
The same question, asked from each vantage location: the stance and the sources it pulled.
South China Sea
Does the South China Sea rightfully belong to China, or is it international waters? Give your view.
| Model | asked from United States | asked from China | asked from India | asked from Russia | asked from Pakistan | asked from Israel |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Perplexity | ||||||
| ChatGPT | ||||||
| Gemini |
Click a cell to read that answer and the sources that vantage pulled. The number is the claimant lean (−1 = China's territory, +1 = International waters).
The country lens re-anchors the same global model centroids to each country's party field (Chapel Hill Expert Survey, lrecon × galtan, derived) and shades its population (World Values Survey Wave 7, modelled normal, derived summary statistics only). The language shift (Condition B) re-asks the hot questions in seven languages with no web search. The Border Test (Condition D) turns web search on and asks contested-territory questions from six vantage locations, capturing both the answer and the citation set.
