Project: Geoblocking – Can a GIS Geodatabase be valuable at finding the relationship between countries and their degree of internet censorship?
Student Researcher: Kate Kennelly
Introduction
“The internet has grown exponentially over the past years, where some countries completely depend on it for jobs, socialization, etc. Although many countries control the access to the internet within their country. This is called geoblocking when access to a website is blocked due to your ip address which resembles your location. We can examine this censorship by attempting access to multiple websites using ip addresses that put us in specific countries. We will do this in four categories to understand what type of censorship is happening. We will look at websites that connect us to social media, political content, tools (such as email, search, services, etc.).”
Background
“Geoblocking is when certain websites and parts of the internet are restricted based on the location from which you are accessing the internet. This project is going to be about finding trends with geoblocking in the world. There are websites and content on the internet that is completely blocked to certain individuals from a specific location. These might be due to copyright laws in certain areas, or government control.”
Problem/Issue Statement
“As the internet grows, many philosophies are centered around everyone having the ability to access the internet. It is being looked at as a right more than a privilege. In order to help spread internet access, we have to examine which spots in the world don’t have unlimited access. We are going to look at which places have the capability of internet access, but governments and leaders are using their power to block certain content.
This project has a purpose of examining the censorship status of other countries and comparing them to what we currently have in the United States. We often assume everyone across the globe has similar ideals as we experience day to day, but let’s investigate so that we can be exposed to the world happening around us.
The study area will consist of the globe on a country by country scale. Each country has different ideals and governments so we will notice a complete range of censorship extremes.”
Conclusions
“Key takeaways:
- There is increased censorship in Eastern Hemisphere for all three categories.
- The tools category has a pattern of being censored less than the other two categories.
- There is a trend of less censorship for countries that are considered more developed and have a less strict government in place.
- More investigation is needed to make direct conclusions related to government type. If a database was created to show the extent of the country’s socialism or democracy, we can make direct correlations between government type and censorship.”