Volume of Political Content
In 2008, a tiny fraction of the political content online belongs to fundamentalist political parties. The vast majority of 87 gigabytes of content belonged to familiar types of secular parties. All in all, just over half the volume of political content online belongs to liberal, conservative or socialist parties and social movements. A third of the content belongs to “other” political parties, which includes nationalist, green and populist parties. A very small portion belongs to Islamic fundamentalist parties.

Volume of Political Content

Website Complexity
Yet another way to assess political content online is by the complexity of links developing within a website. The 355 websites analyzed had 87 gigabytes of content, 2.5 million external links, and 724 thousand internal links. Scanning each of these websites reveals that while communist and secular Islamic websites have low volumes of content and few external links, they
tend to have lots of internal links.

Website Complexity

Method and Discussion
Liberal political parties in countries with significant Muslim populations have a greater tendency to have an official Web site than Islamic parties. In fact, Islamic parties have very little content on the Web. However, the development of a global telecommunications infrastructure is attracting diverse political ideologies and results in greater transborder data flow.

We developed a list of countries with significant Muslim populations and consulted the CIA World Factbook for a list of their political parties. The CIA World Factbook is an annual U.S. publication that provides almanac-style information about the countries of the world. We crosschecked this list with information on Wikipedia. The CIA World Factbook did not list all the political parties. Some countries, such as Saudi Arabia, do not recognize political parties, even though the Green Party of Saudi Arabia has been active since 2001. ((http://www.geocities.com/ksagreens/)) Syria and Uzbekistan ban certain political parties. Iran has 223 registered political parties, associations or organizations that have been legitimized to operate; however, only a few candidates and parties selected by the regime can be elected. ((www.wikipedia.com)) Tajikistan has one dominant party: the People’s Democratic Party of Tajikistan. Opposition parties are allowed but are widely considered to have no real chance of gaining power. ((www.wikipedia.com)) Overall, the countries have a variety of political parties. The number of parties per country with different ideologies range from one to more than 30. In total, we found 1,070 political parties in 63 countries.

After we finalized our list, we searched each political party for an established Web site using Wikipedia and Google. We tested each Web link to verify if the site was valid. Initially, we used the spelling of the party using the Latin alphabet. However, some countries use different alphabets. For example, Russia uses Cyrillic. If possible, we conducted an internet search for the party using the alternate alphabet. This resulted in our team being able to locate a website we would not have been able to using the Latin alphabet. Most of the sites were active, but some did not load, were under construction or could not be accessed (404 forbidden page). Several of the Web sites’ domains had expired and had not been renewed, so they appeared as ad pages. Two of the political parties had blogs hosted on blogspot.com as their official Web site. Researching this information can give us a sense of which countries are politically active online. In total, 356, or 36 percent, of the political parties had active web sites. The country with the most Web sites was Russia with 29, followed by Bulgaria with 19. Uzbekistan had the fewest Web sites with zero.

Using Wikipedia and LexisNexis, we identified whether each party with a working Web site was considered a major or minor party and classified the ideology of each political party. We organized each party under the following ideological categories: Liberal, Socialist, Conservative, Islamic Fundamentalist, Islamic Secular, Other and Unknown. The information in the database of LexisNexis, online newspapers and Wikipedia provided us some clues about the ideology of those political parties. Conservative political ideology promotes the maintenance of religious, cultural or national beliefs, customs and traditions. ((http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism)) Liberalism is the belief that the government exists to protect or enable the liberty of the individual by protecting one’s rights. ((http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism)) The ideology of Communism promotes a socioeconomic system that is characterized by the collective ownership of property and by the organization of labor for the common advantage of all members. ((http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism)) Political parties classified as Socialist insist the goal of a socioeconomic system in which property and the distribution of wealth are subject to control by the state. ((http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism)) A party was classified as Islamic – Fundamental if the political party’s platform advocates ruling a state according to Sharia (Islamic religious law). ((http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_fundamentalism)) On the contrary, if the planks of an Islamic political party focus on secular ideas or values, it was classified as Islamic – Secular. ((http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secularism)) Category “Other” covers Christian Democracy, green politics, nationalism, Populism, etc. Checking the number of seats held by a political party in Parliament was how we identified whether a political party is a major or minor political party. Ten percent was the watershed. If a political party held more than 10 percent of the seats in Parliament, it was classified as a major political party in its country. Major parties accounted for 48 percent. Any party we could not surely define we classified as unknown. Twenty percent of the parties with Web content were classified as Liberal or Conservative. Islamic Fundamentalist sites accounted for only 4 percent of the total and Islamic Secular sites 6 percent.

When looking at political parties’ Web sites, we noted whether or not they loaded in English, were available in English, were multilingual, and the number of languages available. We recorded this information by going to the individual Web sites and looking for the information above. We searched the home page for availability in English and the number of different languages offered. We also noted whether or not the Web sites had multiple languages on their Web pages. The number of Web sites that were available in English totaled 173 websites (49 percent or 174 out of 354). The number of Web sites that were multilingual was 124 (64 percent or 230 out of 354).

Using the Google search engine, we looked up the URL for each political party Web site and noted the number of linked Web sites. By copying the Web site (i.e. www.elghad.org) and pasting it into the Google search engine, we were able to view the exact number of Web sites at a particular time with links to that url, including any extension of that particular url (i.e. www.elghad.org/news, etc.). By doing a Google search for each Web site, we thought that we would be able to get an estimate of how popular the political party and their respective Web sites were on the World Wide Web. This assumption was logical at the time because we believed it would gauge how large the political parties’ online following was. However, we were wrong. The “Google links to” variable varies greatly overtime. Some Web sites shut down, others delete their links and Google can change which sites it blocks; therefore, the variable can change every day – even every hour. We recorded the “Google links to” variable between January 31 and February 23, 2008. On March 6, we double-checked over 30 percent of the data collected by our team and we realized that most of the “Google links to” data had drastically changed. For example, one Web site was recorded as having 933,000 “Google links to.” However, after double-checking it, we found that it only had three “Google links to.” These differences were not uncommon among many Web sites that we double-checked. Having said this, we have decided that using the “Google links to” data would be drastically inconsistent and would not help us determine any conclusions.

Using a snaking program, we snaked each political party’s Web site and noted the number of links scanned, the number of files written and the number of bytes of data downloaded. The country that has the Web site with the most data is Turkey with 30,781,997,056 bytes of data. The country that has the Web site with the least data is India with 1,817 bytes.

Snaking involves downloading raw data from a Web site, including HTML, text, images and other media files. The program gathered three values that we felt were important. The numbers of links scanned allowed us to determine how complex the Web site is, detailing the complexity of the Web site structure by showing us how many links and different sections there were on the page. The more links we found, the more intricate the Web site would be. The number of files written gave us a good handle on the detail provided by the political party on their Web site. The files written would include HTML pages, images and other media. This would be an indication of how many websites we were able to successfully download from the Web site. In addition, we recorded the number of bytes of data downloaded. This was the total of every file written, giving us an idea on the size of the website overall. This was a good way to observe and compare Web site complexity by determining the amount of data provided by the political party online. Also, since media files grow bigger in size with higher quality, the size of these Web sites also implied the sophistication and quality of the political parties’ accessible technology. Bigger and higher quality media files (images, video, etc.) often indicate the political party is more prosperous and able to use current media technology to promote themselves, compared to smaller, more amateur parties that are often unable to afford and use up-to-date media for their causes.

In most cases, if we downloaded more than 150 megabytes for a Web site, we stopped downloading it and noted the information. Due to our time frame, we considered 150 megabytes as a good stopping point for downloading data. The data downloaded is only an indication of how much we were able to download. In comparing the links scanned (files on the Web site) versus files written, we have realized that there are some files for most Web sites (ranging from one to several hundred or more) we were not successfully able to download. In some cases, our downloading encountered an error. We tried re-downloading it on a different computer and were mostly successful, but sometimes we still found errors. We decided not to include any errors in our final spreadsheet. We’ve noticed that some sites redirect to other Web sites, and some sites operate one day and cease to exist the next. Some Web site links were invalid and some sites were under construction. Other Web sites were made from Geocities, a free Internet hosting service, and included advertisements from Geocities not related to the political party that we downloaded.

Using the number of bytes of data we had downloaded for each Web site, we converted into megabytes for an easier way of reading our information. We used the following formula: 1 bytes = 9.53674316 X 10-7 megabytes. When the amount of bytes was converted into megabytes, sometimes the number came out to a decimal point of .9999999. We rounded this number up. For example, if a Web site’s bytes converted into 149.99999999 megabytes, we rounded the number up to 150. Then we created a scale for this information based on the size of the Web site. If the Web site was less than 5 megabytes, we gave it a scale rating of zero. If the Web site was less than 25 megabytes but greater than 5 megabytes, we gave it a scale rating of one. If the Web site was less than 50 megabytes but greater than 25 megabytes, we gave it a scale rating of two. If the Web site was less than 100 megabytes but greater than 50 megabytes, we gave it a size rating of three. If the Web site was less than 150 megabytes but greater than 100 megabytes, we gave it a scale rating of four. If the Web site was greater than 150 megabytes, we gave it a scale rating of five. All Web sites greater than 2 gigabytes or 150 megabytes were consolidated into one scale rating of five.

<5MB = 0

25MB> >5MB = 1

50MB> >25MB = 2

100MB> >50MB = 3

150MB> >100MB = 4

>150MB = 5

Using the website Who Is Lookup (www.whois.com), we looked up where the person who registered the Web site and the server that hosts the Web site was located. Some of the Web sites’ registration information was unavailable or was hidden from the public. One problem we experienced with some Web sites was that the city name did not match the correct country. For example, one said that the city was Syria and the country was the United States. For those, we put “Invalid.” We also put “Invalid” for occurrences in which the Who Is Lookup site could not find the registration information. We put “No Record” if it found the registration information but did not show the country in which it was registered or hosted. Twenty percent or 71 out of 356 sites were hosted in the United States. The percent of sites that were registered in their own country was 34 percent (122 out of 356), whereas the percent of sites that were hosted in their own country is 29 percent (105 out of 356). Overall, the country that hosts the most Web sites was the United States.

Using another group’s spreadsheet on Internet Users/Hosts, we applied information on worldwide Internet users and hosts to our own data. Our spreadsheet displays the amount of Internet users and hosts within each Muslim country. The country with the greatest number of Internet users was India with 60,000,000 users. The country with the fewest number of Internet users was Azerbaijan with 829 users. The total number of Internet users in our list of countries was 228,780,529. The country with the greatest number of Internet hosts was Russia with 2,844,000 hosts. The countries with the fewest number of Internet hosts were Guinea-Bissau and Somalia, each with zero. The total number of Internet hosts in our list of countries was 10,276,420.

Our data is a broad set of information that could be expanded or compiled with other findings to create a more comprehensive body of research.

Download Complete Dataset [To Come].

World Political Parties Online, 2000-2007

Interestingly, the number of wired political parties dropped over time. This is likely because the country coverage improved over time. In addition, researchers had to make a strategic choice about how to code joke political parties that have no real party organization, but do have a web presence. We decided to only cover major and minor parties that field candidates for election, and to exclude joke parties.

In countries where political parties are illegal, the research team also had to make strategic decisions on which websites to code. In such countries organized political groups are often called social movements or associations, and these kinds of groups were included in the search.

World Information Access researchers, who review trends in the global digital divide, studied data on political party Web sites from 2000 ((Data generously shared by Dr. Pippa Norris)) , 2005 ((Data collected by WIA researchers December 2005)) and 2007 ((Data collected by WIA researchers May 2007)). They covered 212 countries and thousands of political parties—3,217 parties in 2007 alone.

Broken down by ideological affiliation, the vast majority of organized political parties in Muslim countries are secular, and there is significant ideological diversity. While 11 percent of the political parties were classified as Islamic fundamentalist, 60 percent either either conservative, liberal or socialist. ((Most parties were cataloged based on information available on their website or in major news media coverage about the political parties. Additional sources were consulted where needed, including Charles Kurzman, Liberal Islam: A Sourcebook (Oxford University Press, 1998).))

GRAPHIC: Political Parties in the Muslim World, By Party Type

This boom in online political life in Muslim countries is surprising given the digital divide between rich and poor countries. Wealthier ones have more high-speed broadband service, which means citizens get more information more quickly. In contrast, many citizens in poorer countries continue using dial-up services, which are slower but less expensive.

In some countries, journalists and pundits are unable to report the news in traditional print or broadcast media, and have turned to the Internet.  In other countries, news is generated by online journalists who write for a national audience, but write from abroad where they can be safe. ((Staff Research. (2006). World Information Access Report. Seattle, WA: World Information Access Project, Department of Communication, University of Washington.))

There are several factors that can explain why a country’s news industry might grow online.  Countries that have a lot of internet users, where the cost of running a traditional print or broadcast media is high, can be expected to have a significant online news industry.  At the same time, countries without a tradition of independent media, or slow Internet connections, may be less likely to have an online news industry.  

Researchers  looked at 100 countries, and compared them on four features.

1. Internet users per capita
2. Online newspapers per capita
3. Online newspapers per daily print newspaper
4. Daily newspapers per capita

The countries with the largest online news industry are said to be those with a relatively high daily print newspaper industry, a larger proportion of internet users per capita, a larger proportion of online newspapers per capita, and a larger proportion of online newspapers per daily newspaper. ((Download WIA graphic: bottom two quartiles, top two quartiles.))

In the developing world, the countries with relatively large online news industries (top quartile in multiple factors) include Argentina, Belize, Brazil, Costa Rica, Lebanon, Mexico, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Turkey and the Ukraine.

These are the six largest firms serve Latin America’s mobile phone markets. All have corporate ladders that lead out of the countries where their clients are. ((Staff Research. (2006). World Information Access Report. Seattle, WA: World Information Access Project, Department of Communication, University of Washington.))
Millicom
(Investment AB, Kinnevik Vigo Carlund, Stockholm, Sweden; Millicom International Cellular, Marc Beuls, Bertrange, Luxembourg)
Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Colombia, Bolivia, Paraguay

Portugal Telecom
(Miguel A. Igrejas, Lisbon, Portugal)
Brazil

Telecom Americas
(America Movil Daniel Hajj Aboumrad, México, D.F., Mexico; Telecom Americas, Carlos Slim Helú México, D.F., Mexico; SBC Communications, Edward E. Whitacre Jr., Houston, USA)
Mexico, Guatemala, Ecuador, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Argentina, Uruguay, Puerto Rico.

Telecom Italia
(Robert Colaninno, Rome, Italy)
Brazil, Venezuela, Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, Cuba

Telefonica Moviles
(Telefonica, Cesar Alierta Izuel, Madrid, Spain)
Honduras, Bolivia, Uruguay, Argentina, El Salvador, Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, Chile, Puerto Rico, Columbia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Panama

Verizon / Vodaphone
(Verizon, Ivan G. Seidenberg, New York, USA; Vodafone, Lord Ian MacLaurin, West Berkshire, UK)
Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Panama, Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay

In important ways, the booming economies of China and India are thriving because of information technologies that both improve efficiency in many economic sectors and improve communication between people. But just as importantly, information technologies are unevenly distributed within these countries. ((Download WIA Spreadsheet Internet Access Within China and India.))

While data on the overall growth of China’s Internet use is impressive, it is important to plumb the data for differences around the country. Between 2000 and 2005 Beijing lost its spot as the district with the largest portion of Internet users. Although it makes sense that Internet access in China’s largest cities and coastal areas will be better than access in more rural provinces, the country has made significant progress in making Internet access equitably distributed across the country. ((In addition to computers, 3.5 million people use technologies such as mobile phones to access the internet.))

One of the most common ways of measuring how a resource is distributed among a population is through GINI coefficients. In a perfectly equal society, 23 percent of the population has 23 percent of the resources, 90 percent of the population has 90 percent of the resources. A more equal society will have a low GINI coefficient, and a society in which resources are highly concentrated will have a high GINI coefficient. In 2000, the GINI coefficient for Internet access across the 32 provinces was 0.59, but by 2005 this value had dropped to 0.42. ((Staff calculations for China based on data from:Â China Internet Network Information Center. (2005). 15th Statistical Survey Report on the Internet Development in China: http://www.cnnic.net.cn/en/index/index.htm.))

Data on India’s states was difficult to come by, but in 2000, India’s major cities accounted for a significant portion of that country’s online population. ((Staff calculations for India based on data from:Â Rightserve.com. (2000). Indian Readership Survey: http://www.bangalorenet.com/internetindia/index.htm.))Â In 2000, 60 percent of India’s Internet users were living in one of India’s 10 largest cities. Among India’s most wired cities, there are still important differences in technology infrastructuring. Even acknowledging that Internet access is a relatively low development priority for many cities in India, there is a striking difference between the level of Internet use in cities such as Madras (30 internet users per 1,000 dwellers) and Calcutta (six internet users per 1,000).