Digital Hegemony
A Google search for “Accra,” the capital of Ghana, returns its Wikipedia entry, travel advice from Lonely Planet and TripAdvisor, and a few news websites like the Guardian. Almost none of the search results come from pages hosted in Ghana
Even capitals or large cities like Lagos see little local content in Google search results.
“This gives rise to a form of digital hegemony, whereby producers in a few countries get to define what is read by others,”
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Early advocates of the internet’s democratizing power believed it would give people more of a voice about their own communities and countries. Instead, it appears to be reinforcing digital divides between wealthier and better connected countries and poorer, less developed countries.
This matters, the researchers argue, because the ways that cities and countries are represented digitally increasingly shapes how people, including those that live there, understand and reproduce those places. “Until the lion learns how to write, every story will glorify the hunter,” the authors quote a Ghanaian proverb. [“History is written by the victor”]
Part of this is commercial. Africa accounts for only 3% of global internet traffic
The researchers also found that the presence of a strong publishing industry and scientific research were strong predictors for more local content.
