Preface
Online around the World aims to give readers a glimpse of how people use the inter-
net, social media, and social apps differently around the globe. There is a tendency
to think that because they are popular forms of communication, everyone uses them
the same way and for the same purpose. The reality, however, is far more complex.
For example, there is no singular version of Facebook or Instagram, the two most
popular social media platforms worldwide at the time of this writing. How they
are used in the United States varies—at times greatly—from how people use them
in Nigeria, Colombia, or other areas. In some parts of the world, they aren’t used
at all, either by choice or through government restrictions.
This encyclopedia focuses on explaining some of the major differences between
the online experience in multiple countries, often in countries occupying the same
geographic regions. It includes information on the history of the internet, gives
social media and app profiles of countries that include user demographics when
available, and examines some of the freedoms, restrictions, and activism that the
web has enabled. In some countries, the internet is not always used for progress or
positive social change; when this is the case, the corresponding entries include in-
formation on the darker side of the internet and social media. The entries can be
read either individually or used to compare and contrast across hemispheres, con-
tinents, regions, and next-door neighbors.
Compiling a book on the internet and social media has its challenges. Because
the environment is robust, expanding, and moving at an increasingly rapid pace, it
can be difficult to capture the essence of what it looks like at any given moment for
an entire country. In some cases, how it functions in the national capital and urban
centers is vastly different from rural or more remote areas. In composing this vol-
ume, the most reliable, up-to-date sources were available online rather than being
based primarily in academic journals and books—a contrast to other encyclope-
dias. Each entry, as it was written, encompassed the general online preferences and
realities of the country at that time; inevitably, as is the nature of the online world,
some of that information has already become outdated as people change how they
access the internet, where they go online, and with whom they choose to exchange
information.
This volume is a culmination of the research and hard work of various talented
researchers. The editors were already familiar with a community of researchers
working on different online environments in various regions and multiple lan-
guages. Starting with that original group, the author pool expanded to include refer-
rals from the community and, on occasion, the identification of researchers posting
