Introduction
CNTI offers practical and accessible digital resources to promote evidence-based global discussions about the challenges facing an independent press and an open internet.
This resource includes aggregated demographic, media and technology data for 179 countries and markets from independent global institutions such as the United Nations, the World Bank, V-Dem Institute, Reporters Without Borders, the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, the World Justice Project, the Committee to Protect Journalists and Freedom House. The first dataset is in tabular form, and the mapped version with selected data is below it.
1The World Bank classifies economies into four income groups: low, lower-middle, upper-middle, and high income. For this purpose it uses gross national income (GNI) per capita data in U.S. dollars, converted from local currency.
2V-Dem relies on expert assessments to annually classify four regime types — liberal democracy, electoral democracy, electoral autocracy and closed autocracy — based on the Regimes of the World measure. V-Dem incorporates confidence estimates in order to account for the uncertainty and potential measurement error due to the nature of the data but also to underline that some countries are placed in the grey zone between regime types: (+) indicates signifies that taking uncertainty into account, the country could also belong to the higher category, while (–) indicates that taking uncertainty into account, the country could belong to the lower category. For more information on scoring and weighting, see their codebook and methodology.
3The World Justice Project relies on expert assessments to annually evaluate the rule of law, drawing on nine factors and 47 sub-factors, in 142 countries and jurisdictions. The rule of law is a durable system of laws, institutions, norms, and community commitment that delivers accountability, just law, open government and accessible and impartial justice. Responses are mapped onto the 44 sub-factors of the Index, codified so all values fall between 0 (weakest adherence to the rule of law) and 1 (strongest adherence to the rule of law), and aggregated at the country level using the simple (or unweighted) average of all respondents. For more information on scoring and weighting, see their methodology.
4Freedom House relies on expert assessments to annually compare the level of internet freedom in 70 countries around the world. Scores are based on a scale of 0 (least free) to 100 (most free). Countries are then ranked from 1-70. For more information on scoring and weighting, see their methodology. Note: Research has found that measures of internet censorship relying on expert analysis are less likely to include false negatives (Fletcher and Hayes-Birchler, 2023). In other words, as many instances of censorship are captured as possible, potentially including some countries that may not have engaged in censorship. Because some governments try to conceal censorship measures, proponents of this method argue that remote measurement methods may miss more nuanced cases of censorship.
5V-Dem relies on expert assessments to annually assess to what extent governments attempt to censor information (text, audio, or visuals) on the internet. Responses are assessed on a 0-3 scale, where 0 represents “The government successfully blocks Internet access except to sites that are pro-government or devoid of political content” and 3 represents “The government allows Internet access that is unrestricted.” For ease of interpretation, interval-level point estimates have been linearly transformed back to the 0-3 coding scale, and the heat map represents linear quartiles (from light yellow for the bottom quartile to dark green for the top quartile). For more information on scoring and weighting, see their codebook and methodology.
6The Tortoise Global AI Index annually ranks countries based on capacity for artificial intelligence, by measuring levels of investment, innovation and implementation. The GAII draws on a range of 28 different data sources and 111 indicators. For more information on scoring and weighting, see their methodology.
7V-Dem relies on expert assessments to annually assess to what extent governments respect press and media freedom, the freedom of ordinary people to discuss political matters at home and in the public sphere and the freedom of academic and cultural expression. The index is aggregated on a 0-1 scale and is formed by taking the point estimates from a Bayesian factor analysis model of the indicators for media censorship effort, harassment of journalists, media bias, media self-censorship, print/broadcast media criticism, print/broadcast media perspectives, freedom of discussion for men/women and freedom of academic and cultural expression. For more information on scoring and weighting, see their codebook and methodology.
8V-Dem relies on expert assessments to annually assess to what extent governments attempt to censor press and broadcast media. Responses are assessed on a 0-4 scale, where 0 represents “Attempts to censor are direct and routine” and 4 represents “The government rarely attempts to censor major media in any way, and when such exceptional attempts are discovered, the responsible officials are usually punished.” For ease of interpretation, interval-level point estimates have been linearly transformed back to the 0-4 coding scale, and the heat map represents linear quartiles (from light yellow for the bottom quartile to dark green for the top quartile). For more information on scoring and weighting, see their codebook and methodology.
9The RSF World Press Freedom Index relies on expert assessments to annually compare the level of freedom enjoyed by journalists and media in 180 countries and territories, based on five distinct categories or indicators (political context, legal framework, economic context, sociocultural context and safety). The Index is based on a score ranging from 0 to 100 that is assigned to each country or territory, with 100 being the best possible score (the highest possible level of press freedom) and 0 the worst. Countries are then ranked from 1-180. For more information on scoring and weighting, see their methodology.
10The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism annually measures overall media trust based on the percentages of respondents in each market who say they ‘agree’ in response to the question: “Thinking about news in general, do you agree or disagree with the following statements? – I think you can trust most news most of the time.” For more information on samples and weighting, see their methodology.
11V-Dem relies on expert assessments to annually assess whether individual journalists are harassed — i.e., threatened with libel, arrested, imprisoned, beaten, or killed — by governmental or powerful nongovernmental actors while engaged in legitimate journalistic activities. Responses are assessed on a 0-4 scale, where 0 represents “No journalists dare to engage in journalistic activities that would offend powerful actors because harassment or worse would be certain to occur” and 4 represents “Journalists are never harassed by governmental or powerful nongovernmental actors while engaged in legitimate journalistic activities.” For ease of interpretation, interval-level point estimates have been linearly transformed back to the 0-4 coding scale, and the heat map represents linear quartiles (from light yellow for the bottom quartile to dark green for the top quartile). For more information on scoring and weighting, see their codebook and methodology.
12The Committee to Protect Journalists regularly tracks attacks on the press, including imprisonment and killings. These two trackers are merged here for an overall count of imprisonments and killings of journalists in the most recent (completed) calendar year. For more information on this tracker, see their methodology.
