World Wide Web: How are different countries and demographic groups accessing the Internet?
Corinna Fehst, Adam Murray, Megan White
Background
Access to the Internet means more than the ability to post a photo or watch cat videos on YouTube. For many, the Internet is a window to the world and plays a key role in day-to-day activities. From chatting with friends to keeping abreast of the news to earning money through freelance employment to organizing political actions, people use the Internet to advance their social and economic well-being.
In this project, we have created three visualizations to illustrate how the world accesses the Internet. Our goal is to bring to life the worldwide distribution of Internet access rates, the gap between male and female Internet access, and the relationship between Internet access and GDP per capita over time. We generally find that while the Internet is rapidly spreading, the Global South continues to lag behind the rest of the world in access rates, especially for women. While we do not offer a causal analysis here, we hypothesize that Internet access equality is important to economic growth and reducing global inequality.
Our analysis
We have examined three aspects of global Internet access:
- Worldwide Access: Using data from the International Telecommunications Unions, we look at how fixed Internet broadband supscription rates have changed over the last decade. This indicator serves as a proxy for investment in infrastructure, which can contribute to economic growth.
- Gender Gap in Access: based on data from the International Telecommunications Unions, the Pew Research Trust and selected national statistical agencies, we also considered how access to the Internet varies by gender across the world today. This seeks to draw attention to the significant gaps in female compared to male Internet access rates in many countries of the world.
- GDP and Access: Using data from the International Telecommunications Union and the World Bank, we visualize the relationship between GDP per capita and Internet access rates between 2000 and 2016. The goal of this analysis is to demonstrate the speed at which middle-income countries are increasingly accessing the Internet, while low-income countries have seen little change in the past decade.