Featured Graphic: Digital Divide: The Geography of Internet Access
Featured Graphic: Digital Divide: The Geography of Internet Access
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DOI：
10.1068/a44497
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发表时间：
2012-05
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Mark Graham;Scott A. Hale;Monica Stephens
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Mark Graham;Scott A. Hale;Monica Stephens
对许多人来说，很难想象没有互联网的生活。它渗透在日常生活中;它是重要的沟通发生的媒介（Castells，2008）;它为增强我们物质世界的内容提供了平台（Graham，2010）;它是几乎所有可以想象的主题的重要信息来源。然而，在我们这个星球上，仍然只有少数人能够获得这种服务。因此，绘制这一地图是为了更好地绘制全球获得服务的轮廓。这张地图（在线彩色）显示了每个国家互联网用户的原始数量以及互联网接入人口的百分比。世界银行自20世纪90年代以来一直跟踪每个国家的互联网用户数量和每100人的互联网连接数量，作为其全球治理指标项目的一部分。这些数据通过一个地图可视化，其中每个国家的大小是根据其在全球互联网用户中的比例绘制的。每个国家的阴影表示其互联网普及率，较深的阴影表示人口中互联网使用率较高。在线人口少于约200万的国家已从地图上删除。我们看到，世界上网人口的分布图显示了一幅有趣的互联网用户分布图。尽管中国的互联网普及率相对较低，但中国拥有世界上最多的互联网用户总数（中国约有4亿用户）。该地图还清楚地表明，南美洲和非洲的用户数量相对较少。这种视觉化使南美洲缩小到比美国还小，非洲在地图上倾斜得无法辨认。我们还看到，在全球南方，互联网普及率很高的国家很少。这表明，未来互联网用户总数的增长很可能来自目前代表性不足的地区。归根结底，互联网接入只是全球数字鸿沟的一个组成部分，数字鸿沟扩大了特权阶层和弱势阶层之间的差异（Graham，2011年）。然而，它是许多类型的沟通，信息获取和参与非本地文化，经济和政治进程的先决条件。
For many people it is hard to imagine life without the Internet. It permeates daily life; it is the medium through which important communication happens (Castells, 2008); it provides the platform for content that augments our material world (Graham, 2010); and it is a vital source of information about almost every imaginable topic. However, it remains that only a minority of the population on our planet have access. This map was therefore created to better chart the global contours of access. This map [in colour online] illustrates the raw number of Internet users in each country as well as the percentage of the population with Internet access. It is created using 2008 statistics from the World Bank, which has tracked the number of Internet users per country and the number of Internet connections per 100 people since the 1990s as part of its Worldwide Governance Indicators project. The data are visualised with a cartogram in which the size of each country is drawn based on its proportion of global Internet users. The shading of each country re ects its Internet penetration rate darker shades indicate higher levels of Internet usage amongst the population. Countries with online populations of less than approximately 2 million have been removed from the map. We see that the map of the world’s online population presents an interesting picture of the locations of Internet users. China has the world’s largest total number of Internet users (there are approximately 400 million users in China) despite its relatively low penetration rate. The map also starkly illustrates the relatively small number of users in South America and Africa. The visualisation causes South America to shrink to a size that is smaller than the United States, and Africa to skew unrecognisably on the map. We also see that there are very few countries in the Global South with high Internet penetration rates. This indicates future growth in the total number of Internet users will most likely come from areas that are currently underrepresented. Ultimately Internet access is only one component of the global digital divides that serve to amplify the differences between the privileged and underprivileged (Graham, 2011). However, it is a prerequisite for many types of communication, information access, and participation in nonlocal cultural, economic, and political processes.