Communications of the ACM
Where Do Most of the Internet Users Live?
Oxford Internet Institute researchers have updated their visualization of global Internet usage.
Credit: Oxford Internet Institute
Researchers at the Oxford Internet Institute have updated their 2011 visualization of Internet users around the world, using 2013 data from the World Bank.
The data is visualized with a hexagonal cartogram, and each hexagon represents about half a million people online. The shading of each country in the cartogram indicates the share of the population with Internet access.
The map shows Asia has 1.24 billion Internet users, which is nearly half (46 percent) of the world's users.
At the national level, China has the largest Internet population at 600 million people, followed by the U.S. with 270 million, India with 190 million, and Japan with 110 million people online. China has more Internet users than the U.S., India, and Japan combined, even though most of its population has never used the Internet.
Among countries with at least 10 million inhabitants, the highest Internet penetration is in the Netherlands, the U.K., Japan, Canada, South Korea, the U.S., Germany, Australia, Belgium, and France.
Nonetheless, the map ultimately shows most of the world's people remain disconnected, says Oxford researcher Mark Graham. "Even today, only a bit more than a third of humanity has access to the Internet," he notes.
From University of Oxford
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