The world is not flat: Evaluating the inequality in global information gatekeeping through website co-mentions

George A. Barnett, Jeanette B. Ruiz, Weiai Wayne Xu, Ji-Young Park and Han Woo Park

Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 2017, vol. 117, issue C, 38-45

Abstract: This study explores inequality in global internet by looking at structure of co-mentions across global top website domains. Findings show that websites of the U.S. were central and dominant in the global content flow. The network based on the level of corporate ownership was even more centralized, in which the top 10 sites producing at least 1% of all Internet citations were from U.S.-based companies such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter, which together accounted for >70% of the network ties. In particular, Google was at the center of the network and serves as the Internet “gatekeeper”. Additionally, the global web is divided into two clusters of websites, one represented by websites owned by American firms and the other by Chinese companies. The study discusses how such divide might be the outcome of geopolitics, internet governance and media conglomeration.

Keywords: Co-mention analysis; Webometrics; Globalization; Inequality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040162517300422
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:tefoso:v:117:y:2017:i:c:p:38-45

DOI: 10.1016/j.techfore.2017.01.011

Access Statistics for this article

Technological Forecasting and Social Change is currently edited by Fred Phillips

More articles in Technological Forecasting and Social Change from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().