Introduction

This article surveys a range of contemporary information geographies to access patterns of mutability, mobility, and underlying power relations relative to historical arrangements in the production and use of information. It engages with the geographic distributions of access, participation, and representation.

Geographies of access and enablement

The statistics used for this were calculated by were using the internet penetration of a country (according to definitions and data from the World Bank). Geographies of access are important to understand because it provides insights into the distribution of technologies and services which are essential for digital communication, participation, and representation. Thus, this shows the patterns of (dis)connectivity.

The results here show that Asia holds 42% of the worlds internet users (which is more than Europe and North America combined), and that all but four of the countries (Canada, New Zealand, Qatar and South Korea) with penetration rates greater than 80% are in Europe. The United States and Latin America have 40-60% penetration rates. However, more than 20 sub-Saharan African countries have an internet penetration of less then 20%, which means that most people on the planet still remain without internet access.

Broadband Affordability

The statistics used for this was based on mappings of the costs of fixed broadband subscription charges relative to the gross national income per capita, and was published by published by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU 2013).

The results show that Europe and North America have high absolute costs but have some of the lowest relative costs in the world. Africa’s costs ranges between 10% and 250% of average income compared to North and South American and European users who can obtain internet connection for less than 10% of their income - distinction shared by only five sub-Saharan African countries. In 14 other sub-Saharan African countries as well Afghanistan and Tajikistan, the cost of internet connectivity is equal to 100% or more of the average salary.

These statistics mean and show that there are countries which have extremely little internet users, which is seemingly correlating to the cost of internet connection (and perhaps device, infrastructure costs), and thus they are not able to participate in or contribute to representations of their localities.

Geographies of participation

This looks at statistic from three different variables: domain names, GitHub users and Wikipedia edits. These statistics are important because they represent who is making the content we are exposed to.

Geography of domain names

The data source here was the World Bank (2011), and it shows two types of domain names. Namely, generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) and country code Top-Level Domains (ccTLDs). The data assumes that ccTLDs are used and registered by the people in that country.

The findings show that the majority of domains (78%) are registered in Europe or North America, in contrast Asia is home to only 13%. Globally, there are approximately 10 internet users for every registered domain. The United States has about one domain name for every three internet users, western Europe has five internet users per domain (but this varies from country to country), in contrast China has only one registered domain for every 40 internet users. In the Middle East and Africa this ratio is even smaller, with one domain per over 50 internet users.

It is interesting to note here that a large amount of internet users does not translate into a high number of domain registrations.

Geography of GitHub users and commits

The data here comes from the GitHub archive (2015) and the World Bank and shows the number of GitHub users and commits by these users relative to the number of internet users in a country.

North America and Europe each account for over one-third of the total number of GitHub users and the rate of participation, respectively 34 and 21 GitHub users per 100 000 internet user, which contrasts with the global average of 11.4G per 100 K. Northern and Eastern Europe, Iceland and Sweden; each have more than 50G per 100 K as well as New Zealand and Australia with about 35G per 100 K. The remaining 17% of GitHub users are located in Asia (Singapore, Taiwan and China). The Middle East, North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa stand out with the lowest levels of participation and combined the regions are home to fewer than 1% of GitHub users and commits.

This shows that this content creation is concentrated in Europe and North America.

Geography of Wikipedia contributions

The data here comes from the number of edits to every language version of Wikipedia coming from all countries and territory over a 2-year period (2010– 2011).

There is once again a contrast here. Over a million edits each quarter come from users located in the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom and France. In contrast, only a few thousand edits per quarter are registered from most of Africa and the Middle East.

The other data illustrates the percentage of edits about a country that come from users within that country. 85% and 78% of content about the United States and the United Kingdom comes from users located there, in contrast, only 16% of Nigerian content and 9% of Kenyan content is created by locals and in much of the rest of the continent less than 5% of content is generated locally.

The lack of self-representation from African countries is scary and shows how little they are affecting their own representation to the world.

The global North is characterised by the greatest levels of participation and is creating the bulk of digital content, while the global South contributes very little. Africa, in particular, is almost entirely omitted from these processes of digital generativity.

Geography of representation

This next part of the article is how countries are represented through applications such as Google Search, OpenStreetMap, and the Semantic Web as defined by and Geonames. Unsurprisingly, there was more information about the places in the global north than in other parts of the world. This leaves places such as North America and Europe to be over-represented and the rest of the world severely under-represented.

Analysis of findings/Own thoughts

What I find very interesting about this research paper is that it feels like “real” proof of the global north and of techno-colonialism in play. The people who contribute the most creations and participate in how they are created, are able to impose their ideals and representations onto others – whether intentionally or unknowingly.

Techno-colonialism is an ongoing colonisation of the digital space. Techno-colonialism is a term coined by Randy Bush in 2015 and it describes “the exploitation of poorer cultures by richer ones through technology.” When the knowledge system of society is controlled by someone other than the locals, and their participation is intentionally taken away this becomes a problem.

Typically, during colonial rule, the colonial power controls the knowledge system of the society. This often meant the “intentional divestment of indigenous populations of power of participation” (Collier in Bristow, 2016). In techno-colonialism, this is primarily seen through the digital divide. The digital divide is a social issue referring to the differing amount of information between those who have access to the internet, and those who do not. This divide became particularly prominent during the information age in which information and communication technologies became the basis for economic and social connectivity. In other words, those who are able to be connected to the digital world, will always have more advantages than those who are unable to connect.

Without variation, technologies can be created with inherent biases of which the creators may not be aware. In Birhane et al. 2019 ‘Algorithmic Injustices: Towards a Relational Ethics’ we see how this may come to be. The tools we create are intrinsically tied to our nature of being and morality, but they also sustain moral order because it continuously perpetuates the creator’s biases. This static take on ethics which algorithms use, does not allow for the changes and development of society.

In saying this, I think that when we design things, we must have some essentials: 1. A variety of creators/contributors 2. To create with intention and to be aware of our own biases 3. To ensure our creations can be shared by all