Research

Country Profiles

Country profiles offer a synopsis of the findings and conclusions of ONI research into each of the countries. The summaries also provide a basic framework for considering the factors influencing countries’ decision to filter or abstain from filtering the Internet, as well as the impact, relevance, and efficacy of technical filtering in a broader context of Internet censorship.

Regional Overviews

The eight regional overviews provide broad summaries that exhibit the ways in which the countries within each region are grappling with the implications of Internet freedom and the challenges of regulating online content. The regional overviews for Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, and the Commonwealth of Independent States synthesize the findings of the technical tests and background research carried out in these regions, presenting the results of the forty country studies in a greater context. The other five regional overviews — the United States and Canada, Europe, Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Australia and New Zealand — are written to extend the coverage of the study beyond the forty countries in which we were able to test in the first year of this global filtering study, and are based solely on background research and secondary sources.

Reports

The reports section contains larger research projects undertaken by the ONI, including country reports presenting a more comprehensive look at Internet filtering practices in a given country, as well as bulletins and advisories highlighting notable events related to Internet filtering, and research into Internet filtering performed before the formation of ONI.

Articles

A selection of published articles about Internet filtering and surveillance.

Research Tools

Filtering Map

The filtering map provides a graphical representation of ONI's research results, depicting the states and regions where filtering is most prevalent.

Issue Crawler Visualizations

The ONI has collaborated with Dr. Richard Rogers and Govcom.org to produce a series of analytical visualizations based on the outputs of the ONI's research and Govcom.org's issue crawler tool.

Leaky Content: An Approach to Show Blocked Content on Unblocked Sites in Pakistan - The Baloch Case (November 2006) [method pdf] [story pdf]

Two Providers, Two Internets. The Case of the United Arab Emirates (November 2006) [pdf]

The Internet Treats Censorship as a Malfunction and Routes around it? A Semi-manual Approach to Internet Censorship Circumnavigation (June 2005) [updated pdf]

A Censor's Network: Iranian Social, Political and Religious Sites. A Hyperlink Analysis Method for Censored Website Discovery (June 2006) [updated pdf]