In 2015, the International Telecommunication Union estimated about 3.2 billion people, or almost half of the world's population, would be online by the end of the year. Of them, about 2 billion would be from developing countries, including 89 million from least developed countries.[1][2] According to Hootsuite, the number of Global Internet users has already reached almost 5 billion, or about 53% of the global population as of 2021.[3] The flat world of information has been created thanks to the Internet and globalization. This phenomenon allows individuals to have access to cultural and ideological beliefs without having to go to other countries, resulting in immobile acculturation.[4]
These maps illustrate the growth in the percentage of individuals using the Internet from 1990 to 2014.[10]
Number of Internet users in 2011
This map illustrates the total number of Internet users in a country as well as the percentage of the population that had Internet access in 2011. Source: Information Geographies at the Oxford Internet Institute.[11]Global internet access graph, 2000–2018
This map presents an overview of broadband affordability, as the relationship between average yearly income per capita and the cost of a broadband subscription (data referring to 2011). Source: Information Geographies at the Oxford Internet Institute.[19]
The Internet Systems Consortium provides account for the number of the worldwide number of IPv4 hosts (see below). In 2019 this internet domain survey was discontinued as it does not account of IPv6 hosts, and therefore might be misleading.[20]
The Web index is a composite statistic designed and produced by the World Wide Web Foundation. It provides a multi-dimensional measure of the World Wide Web's contribution to development and human rights globally. It covers 86 countries as of 2014, the latest year for which the index has been compiled.[22][23] It incorporates indicators that assess the areas of universal access, freedom and openness, relevant content, and empowerment, which indicate economic, social, and political impacts of the Web.
Map showing the score of the countries included in the Web index.
The Carna Botnet was a botnet of 420,000 devices created by hackers to measure the extent of the Internet in what the creators called the "Internet Census of 2012".[24][25]
World map of 24-hour relative average utilization of IPv4 addresses observed using ICMP ping requests as part of the Internet Census of 2012 (Carna Botnet), June – October 2012.[26] Key: from red (high), to yellow, green (average), light blue, and dark blue (low).
^Vuong, Quan-Hoang; Napier, Nancy K. (27 November 2015). "Acculturation and global mindsponge: An emerging market perspective". International Journal of Intercultural Relations. 49: 354–367. doi:10.1016/j.ijintrel.2015.06.003.
^Due to legal concerns the OpenNet Initiative does not check for filtering of child pornography and because their classifications focus on technical filtering, they do not include other types of censorship.
^"Internet Enemies"Archived 2014-03-12 at the Wayback Machine, Enemies of the Internet 2014: Entities at the heart of censorship and surveillance, Reporters Without Borders (Paris), 11 March 2014. Retrieved 24 June 2014.
