[bestbits] MIT review - Governments Around the World Deny Internet Access to Political Opponents

[Carolina Rossini]

Computing <https://www.technologyreview.com/c/computing/>
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602310/governments-around-the-world-deny-internet-access-to-political-opponents/?utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=post

Governments Around the World Deny Internet Access to Political Opponents

Keeping your enemies offline can cripple their chances of overthrowing you.

   - by Mike Orcutt <https://www.technologyreview.com/profile/mike-orcutt/>
   - September 8, 2016


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Whether or not your ethnic group has political power in the country where
you live is a crucial factor determining your access to the Internet,
according to a new analysis.

The effect varies from country to country, and is much less pronounced in
democratic nations. But the study, published today in *Science*
<http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2016/09/07/science.aai7862.full>,
suggests that besides censorship, another way national governments prevent
opposing groups from organizing online is by denying them Internet access
in the first place, says Nils Weidmann <http://nils.weidmann.ws/>, a
professor of political science at the University of Konstanz in Germany.

Internet access is clearly linked to individuals’ socioeconomic status and
the level of development where they live. These factors contribute to
“digital divides” seen throughout the world. In the new analysis, Weidmann
and his coauthors aimed to shed light on a factor that isn’t as well
understood: political divisions between ethnic groups.

To achieve this, the group first had to create a new global map reflecting
how Internet access varies across geographic regions within individual
nations. For many countries, especially autocracies, such “subnational
data” is difficult to find or is simply not available, says Weidmann. So he
and his colleagues used data from a Swiss Internet service provider that
handles huge amounts of global traffic, and information from adatabase that
tracks the global Internet routing system <http://www.routeviews.org/>, to
create a global database of “subnetworks,” or small units of the Internet
that correspond to just a few hundred IP addresses. They used a geolocation
database to map those subnetworks. The map above highlights all the active
subnetworks in the world in 2012.

The researchers then turned to the so-called Ethnic Power Relations list, a
database that categorizes the world’s ethnic groups according to their
political relevance in their home countries, distinguishing between
politically “included” vs. “excluded” groups. Using this distinction, and
geographic information pinpointing the settlement regions of individual
groups, Weidmann and colleagues determined how Internet penetration rates
relate to political power. (About a third of the groups in the list were
too widely dispersed to be included in the analysis.)

They concluded that excluded groups had significantly lower access compared
to the groups in power, and that this can’t be explained by other economic
or geographic factors (like living in rural vs. urban areas). Weidmann says
the results add a new layer to our understanding of how national
governments control Internet use. “You don’t have to censor if the
opposition doesn’t get access at all.” He says organizations aiming to
increase Internet access for humanitarian reasons must bear that in mind,
and be careful not to reinforce such political bias.

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Tagged

broadband access
<https://www.technologyreview.com/g/broadband-access/>, digital
divide <https://www.technologyreview.com/g/digital-divide/>, Internet
penetration <https://www.technologyreview.com/g/internet-penetration/>
Credit

Map by Nils B. Weidmann, background from Natural Earth
[image: Mike Orcutt]

Mike Orcutt <https://www.technologyreview.com/profile/mike-orcutt/> Associate
Editor

I’m an associate editor at MIT Technology Review. I report from Washington,
D.C., where I’m on constant lookout for stories that illustrate how the
U.S. government is embracing (or failing to embrace) emerging technologies,
and that highlight events… More
<https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602310/governments-around-the-world-deny-internet-access-to-political-opponents/?utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=post#>

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*Carolina Rossini *
Vice President, International Policy and Strategy
+ 1 (617) 697 9389 | skype: carolrossini | @carolinarossini
PGP ID:  0xEC81015C
*PublicKnowledge* | @publicknowledge <https://twitter.com/publicknowledge>
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