The relative cost of being connected to the internet underpins the global digital divide. This visualization illustrates the unevenness of the geographies of broadband affordability, the ramifications of which can be seen in some of the other visualizations created by our project, such as the cartogram of the world online and the archipelago of disconnection.… Read More »
My colleagues Nicolas Friederici, Sanna Ojanperä, and I have recently finished a paper in which we analyse ‘Grand Visions’ of how Internet connectivity affects development in Africa. In the paper, we contrast these visions with the actually available empirical evidence to support those claims. You will be able to read our full conclusions in the paper below: Friederici, N.… Read More »
In this year’s Development Studies Association Conference, we will present a paper titled ‘Measuring the Hidden Contours of the Global Knowledge Economy with a Digital Index’. In this paper we propose a Digital Knowledge Economy Index, which combines traditional data sources with bespoke data on capacities and skills (measured via content-creation and participation on digital platforms)… Read More »
Chris Foster and I have a new publication that will be coming out in Global Networks: Foster, C. and Graham, M. 2016. Reconsidering the Role of the Digital in Global Production Networks. Global Networks. DOI: 10.1111/glob.12142 (pre-publication version here). Abstract: Global production networks (GPN) has become a key framework in conceptualising linkages, power and structure… Read More »
The two previous blog posts in this small series discussed Internet population and growing Internet access worldwide. In this post we turn our eyes to territories that are largely left out of global digital connectivity. We look at these areas in terms of Internet penetration (i.e. the share of their population that have “used the Internet… Read More »
The Importance of Being Connected The Internet is ever more important to contemporary economic, social, and political activity. Thus, it is important to map who and where is (and isn’t) connected and can (or cannot) participate. Changing Internet Penetration by World Region In our last post, we primarily discussed how the number of people with Internet… Read More »
Description This map shows the total number of Internet users in a country (size of the country) as well as the percentage of the population that has Internet access (shade of the country). It is an update of our 2011 visualization. Data and Method The map uses 2013 data on Internet users and population that… Read More »
Stefano and I have put together a short paper that will be forthcoming in Environment and Planning A. The paper focuses on the geography of geographic information, and builds on our work into the uneven geographies of information. It highlights how the very information systems that we use as ‘ground-truth’ are themselves characterised by significant biases. Abstract Gazetteers are… Read More »
Visualisation highlighting the fact that a majority of content produced in Wikipedia is about a relatively small part of our planet
Illustration of the global division of microwork undertaken on the ODesk platform, revealing some of its locally divergent practices