A '90s sci-fi novel is a peculiar source for a term that unites some of the most powerful nations in the world.

'Anglosphere' first appeared in Neal Stephenson's book The Diamond Age, but today is used to group English-speaking nations like America, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

It links places with shared language or culture, but writer and political sociologist Dennis Altman argues it also represents an Australian 'obsession' — one he says is driven by laziness.

He says Australians are increasingly looking to the Anglo world for news, and political and economic policies, despite becoming "more and more sceptical of the US, particularly since the election of the current president".

"It's not just that we grow up with American and British film, television and books," he says.

"If you look at the way news is covered in Australia, sometimes you actually have to remind yourself we're not in the US; Trump is not our president, literally.

"There is a sense in which we have become lazy and we have become too obsessed with what is happening in those two centres of the Anglosphere — namely New York and London."

The problem with that, he says, is that we don't expose ourselves to anything new.

"It's too easy and familiarity breeds more familiarity," he says.

He cites the "saturation coverage" of America's interactions with Russia as a recent example, arguing that if the media paid the same attention to other areas, we could learn something more valuable.

"We're not really interested in understanding what is happening in a whole lot of countries where there's just as much political motion," he says.

"There's a presidential election looming in Indonesia, which is of much greater consequence to us than, say, the recent Royal wedding.

"But while all our TV channels sent reporter upon reporter to cover the Royal wedding, I don't know how many of them are going to shell out to have people in Indonesia covering something that is actually substantially important, not just pretty pictures."

Australians had a huge interest in the recent Royal wedding ( Getty: OLI SCARFF )

'We are relentlessly anglophone'

Professor Altman says Australia's preoccupation with the Anglo world isn't exclusive to media reporting.

He points to the fact that fewer Australian high school students are studying Indonesian — and possibly also Japanese — than 40 years ago.

"Most of us don't feel the need to use another language," he says.

"Very ironically, in a country that is as multicultural and as multilingual as we are in Australia, we are relentlessly anglophone in our use of language."

Sorry, this audio has expired Do we ignore the policies and cultures of other parts of the world at our peril?

He also cites our arts and cultural scene as another example.

The Melbourne and Sydney writers' festivals, he says, had a disproportionate number of Americans on the program.

"In many ways events like writers' festivals, which try very hard to promote diversity, seem to forget that diversity is also about the countries that people come from," he says.

A recent ABC Q&A literary special also caught Professor Altman's attention — specifically, the Sydney Writers' Festival guests on its panel.

"The irony was all four of them live and work in New York City. They could have got on the subway to talk to each other," Professor Altman says.

"They were very interesting, sure, but surely we can go beyond just talking about what the Americans are talking about."

A problem of supply or demand?

But Ben Wellings, a senior lecturer in politics and international relations at Monash University, doesn't agree that Australians are obsessed with the Anglosphere.

He points to "the growth of English as a business language since the end of the Cold War" and that it is also the language of the internet.

"I think 'obsession' sounds like it's something that we're generating ourselves," he says.

"Maybe it's supply rather than demand."

He says film and television, for example, emerge from the Anglo world on an ever-increasing scale and new technologies allow Australians to consume them in ways unimaginable even 20 years ago.

But he does admit a focus on English in how we communicate presents a "missed opportunity".

"There is a world out there beyond the English-speaking world that actually has a lot to offer Australia," he says.

Professor Altman says we stand to gain a lot by connecting with a range of cultures.

"We seem to have totally lost that ability to connect the multicultural reality of Australia with our intellectual concerns," he says.

"There are a whole lot of places in the world where there is fascinating cultural, intellectual, political life that we don't know about."

He proposes a deliberate effort to shift the balance of where Australia looks to overseas.

"Maybe we need to be finding ways of, quite deliberately, going out and looking for people who are writing in languages other than English," he says.

But a shift of focus could be a long time in the making.

Dr Wellings says our interest in the Anglo world is "to do with historical and cultural traditions that are deep set and won't change any time soon".

Australia's interest in the monarchy, for example, can be attributed to the fact that Australia has a relationship with the British Royals that it is part of the Australian constitution.

"But also the monarchy has adapted quite well to become celebrities and there is a celebrity appeal to a Royal wedding," Dr Wellings explains.

"I think that there are horizontal and vertical reasons that Australia is plugged into the Anglosphere world.

"Those reasons are to do with historical connections but also new technologies for promoting celebrity and delivering content to people who want to be entertained in that way."