Digital and Online Information in a Global World: A Study in Ambiguity
Marek Sroka
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Introduction
The Internet has widened the information environment in the global world. It is almost a cliché to say
that we live in a global village where individuals and communities are interconnected. Despite unequal
access to computers, including access to digital and online information among individuals or nations,
often referred to as a digital divide, the mobile Internet and the explosion of new mobile platforms have
made it possible for some developing countries and regions to make significant progress with respect to
Internet connectivity and connecting to digital information.1 For example, of the five global regions
Latin America had the fastest growing internet population, increasing 12 percent in the past year to
more than 147 million unique visitors in March 2013.2 Online advertising is on the rise in Brazil, growing
97 percent in the past year to 130 billion display ad impressions delivered in March 2013.3
The world of digital content is developing even faster, though a large part of digital content is
still being produced by the developed world. There are many ongoing initiatives to convert manuscripts,
photographs, books, and “every other kind of documentary heritage to digital format, and the day is
drawing closer when there will be an electronic option available for most of the texts that people want
to read, for whatever purpose.”4 As more and more information is created in digital formats, many
institutions resolve to preserve their information or knowledge assets in institutional repositories that
often support open access to their digital collections. Yet despite globalization and ever growing
2
Internet presence in almost every part of the world, the promise of equal access to unbiased digital and
online information remains only partially fulfilled. There are various obstacles facing digital information
and search users in both developed and developing countries, namely the monopoly of online-search
market and alleged search bias of American Web companies; censorship and political control of the
Internet; and disequilibrium in information flow and creation. I will argue that the retrieval and creation
of local and regional digital and online content is critical to “globalizing” the world information. This can
be accomplished by supporting local digital initiatives and developing national digital collections search
tools as well as promoting non-Western content in global online-search systems and greater
competition in the online-search market and digital content creation.
Monopoly of Online-Search Market and Alleged Search Bias
According to a February 2012 Pew Internet survey 91 percent of “online adults use search engines to
find information on the web,” which is up from 84 percent in June 2004, the last time Pew Research
Center conducted a similar survey.5 By a wide margin, Google dominates the list of most used search
engines. Asked which search engine they use most often, 83 percent of search users say Google,
followed by Yahoo used by just 6 percent of search users.6 The gap between Google and Yahoo has
widened significantly since 2004, the last time this question was asked. In 2004, 47 percent of search
users said Google was their engine of choice and 26 percent cited Yahoo.7 According to some estimates,
Google is used for more than 80 percent, or even over 90 percent, of the searches in Europe, and 65.2
percent of all the searches in the world.8 Google’s dominance of the American and global online-search
market speaks to its audacious plan to organize the world’s information and the status of English as
lingua franca. However, it makes some search users uneasy, posing the question of “what do we gain
and what do we lose by inviting Google to be the lens through which we view the world.”9 Although the
Federal Trade Commission (F.T.C.) in the United States closed a two-year antitrust investigation after
finding that Google had not violated antitrust statutes and dismissed the most serious allegations of
3
monopolistic behavior, namely that “the company manipulated search results to benefit its services”,
the European Commission regulators took a tougher line.10
In November 2010, the European Commission opened an antitrust investigation into allegations
“that Google has abused a dominant position in online search, in violation of European Union rules
(Article 102 TFEU).”11 The probe followed complaints by Google’s competitors about “unfavorable
treatment of their services in Google’s unpaid and sponsored search results coupled with an alleged
preferential placement of Google’s own services.”12 In December 2012 after conducting preliminary
talks with Google officials, Joaquin Almunia, Vice President of the European Commission responsible for
Competition Policy, issued a statement enumerating the four competition concerns expressed by the
Commission. These concerns related to “the way in which Google’s vertical search services are
displayed within general search results as compared to services of competitors; the way Google may use
and display third party content on its vertical search services; exclusivity agreements for the delivery of
Google search advertisements on other websites; and restrictions in the portability of AdWords
advertising campaigns.”13 Vice President Almunia expressed hope that an eventual agreement would be
reached with Google based on Article 9 of the European Union Antitrust regulation.14
By April, 2013, Google made proposals to try to address the European Commission’s four
competition concerns. Google agreed, among other things, to a series of changes (commitments)
including labeling “promoted links to its own specialized search services so that users can distinguish
them from natural web search results,” and offering “all websites the option to opt-out from the use of
all their content in Google’s specialized search services, while ensuring that any opt-out does not unduly
affect the ranking of those web sites in Google’s general web search results.” Google also offered to “no
longer include in its agreements with publishers any written or unwritten obligations that would require
them to source online search advertisements exclusively from Google, and no longer impose obligations
that would prevent advertisers from managing search advertising campaigns across competing
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advertising platforms.”15 Although the European Commission welcomed the changes proposed by
Google and invited comments about Google’s commitments, it remained critical of Google’s business
practices by considering “at this stage that these practices could harm consumers reducing choice and
stifling innovation in the fields of specialized search services and online search advertising.”16 The
European Commission also reserved the right to make the comments “legally binding on Google.”17
It remains to be seen if Google’s proposals addressing the four competition concerns will be
accepted by the European Commission. A final settlement could be agreed upon after the summer of
2013, “in the best case, according to Antoine Colombani, a spokesman for the European Union’s
Competition Commissioner, Joaquin Almunia.”18 In early September, 2013, Commissioner Almunia
promised that “in the coming weeks” he would make a decision whether to turn Google’s proposals into
legally binding commitments, thus settling an almost three-year-old European Union probe into the way
Google operates its search services, or to issue a so-called statement of objections about the company’s
behavior.19 Some researchers are already predicting that there soon could be two Googles: “one built
for Europeans, with links to rival search engines and labels alerting users whenever Google is featuring
its own products and another version for everyone else, with none of those consumer-friendly
features.”20
Censorship and Control of the Internet
The growth of the Internet in some parts of the world seems to have come at the expense of free
expression. Internet users often remain subject to the arbitrary dictates of the state censorship. In the
most extreme cases, human rights advocates have been punished for using the Internet for advocating
for personal freedoms and political reform.21
Another issue that has resurfaced in recent months is the use of surveillance and data mining
technology for legitimate as well as malign purposes.22 There is evidence that Internet users may resort
to self-censorship or broadly understood code words to evade censorship and sweeping government
5
surveillance. For example, in 2009 China Digital Times started a detailed online glossary of translation of
coded terms created by Chinese Internet users, called the Grass-Mud Horse Lexicon.23
Although China is not the only country censoring its Internet, according to some estimates only
Iran scores higher than China with regard to the depth of filtering the Internet.24 China’s censorship of
the Internet has been debated by U.S. lawmakers on many occasions, including the March 2010
congressional hearing about Google and Internet control in China.25 According to Chairman Dorgan, the
purpose of the hearing was “to examine China’s censorship of the Internet and the challenge it poses
both to advocates of free expression and to U.S. companies doing business in China.”26 The hearing
revealed, among other things, Google’s struggle with the Chinese government’s increasing attempts to
limit speech online that led Google to stop censoring their services on Google.cn (Google China) and
start redirecting users to Google’s site in Hong Kong (google.com.hk) where Google is offering
“uncensored search in simplified Chinese designed specifically for users in China.”27
This, however, is not the case with Google’s biggest rival in China, Baidu (baidu.com), which
enjoys a predominant position in the China Internet search-engine market and occupies a distant second
place, after Google, in the global Internet search-engine market. For example, a simple search for
“Falun Gong” or “Tibet” will result in significantly different sets of results in Google and Baidu. The top
two search results in Google include official websites of Falun Gong (also called Falun Dafa) followed by
websites describing persecution of the movement in China as well as links to American news outlets
covering the predicament of Falun Gong in China. On the other hand, top search results retrieved by
Baidu included links to anti-Falun Gong websites, such as “truth on Falun Gong,” and no links to the
movement’s official website.28 Interestingly, one of the top search results retrieved by Yandex, the
largest search engine in Russia, with about 60% market share in that country, included the website of
the Falun Dafa Information Center and other pro-Falun Gong sites.29
Search results for “Tibet” would, for some, be evidence of the Chinese government’s official
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position on Tibet, and for others, the support of American public opinion for the Tibetan government in
exile, with Google directing users to the official site of the Tibetan government in exile and Baidu
directing users to “China Tibet Online”-the website sponsored by the Chinese government30
Although, there are still many countries notorious for censoring their Internet, it is hard to
imagine that they will ever dominate the global flow of information. The question that remains
unanswered, however, is “how global is your information?.”
A Need for Global Information World: Being an International Scholar in a Digital Age
One of the greatest challenges facing universities all over the world is the development of strategies
aimed at advancing international scholarship through locating and using global information.
In December 2012, Duke University and the Center for Research Libraries co-sponsored an
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation supported conference on The Global Dimensions of Scholarship and
Research Libraries.31 Deborah Jakubs, the Rita DiGiallonardo Holloway University Librarian and Vice
Provost for Library Affairs at Duke University, emphasized that “the recommendations from the Global
Forum acknowledge the centrality [emphasis mine] of international resources to the entire academic
endeavor.”32 The conference participants supported the internationalization of research libraries and
perspectives stating that “the mandates of globalization require broadly international collections,
perspectives, and skills.”33 Another recommendation dealt with the development of “programs and
services that bring international expertise and perspectives to services hitherto based in U.S./Englishlanguage sources and scholarship.”34
However, the global context for learning and scholarship depends on achieving some
equilibrium in information flow between the developed and developing countries as well as
“intercultural consideration in the creation of information.”35 The landscape of global scholarly
information is shaped to a large degree by Western intermediaries, and predominantly American
companies, who control access to large quantities of market-based materials. Some argue that the
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information flow is mostly one directional-from North to South, thus reflecting the perspective of the
developed world (i.e. North or West). This view is shared by many area studies librarians in the United
States, including members of the Africana Librarians Council (ALC) who recently issued a response to the
report from the Duke [Global Dimensions of Scholarship and Research Libraries] conference.36 ALC
stressed the importance of developing agreements and best practices in connection with intellectual
property and copyright regarding African libraries and the African publishing trade “in the effort to avoid
perpetuating a north/south inequity paradigm.”37 According to ALC, these are crucial issues which
“need to be addressed as a prerequisite to contemplating any large-scale partnership and digitization
efforts.”38 ALC stressed the importance of partnerships with African scholarly institutions, including
collaboration with the Mountains of the Moon University in Uganda as well as the National Archives of
Liberia that resulted in the digitization of primary materials.39 These are just two current examples of
international partnerships that have resulted in providing access to localized (non-Western) research
collections and topics.
The commercial model of acquiring, licensing and selling digital and digitized information
(scholarly or non-scholarly) on a global stage puts developing countries at a significant disadvantage as
major commercial players currently include mostly Western and Asian companies. It may also create
more controversy surrounding the issue of copyright and intellectual property and the ownership
(physical or virtual) and commercialization of one’s culture as cultural heritage becomes increasingly
significant across the world. Moreover, the question of who defines what is to be preserved and what is
to be erased or allow to disappear remains the topic of many discussions.40
Navigating the Global Information and Research Landscape
Digital resources are by their nature accessible without regard to time and space. The expansion of the
electronic universe beyond English-language resources may result in a more balanced global information
and research landscape. International digital cultural and historical collections represent increasing
8
concern about preserving one’s cultural heritage. Created by academic institutions, museums, nongovernmental organizations as well as vendors, and others who are engaged in creating and
disseminating global information, they are critical in presenting different cultural and religious
traditions. Europeana and The European Library are perfect examples of sharing European cultural
heritage from thousands of European archives, galleries, museums, and libraries, in a virtual world of
global Internet.41 The European Library provides access to over eighteen million digital items from 48
European national libraries and leading European research libraries.42
Other examples of search portals for national digital collections as well as documentary heritage
include Gallica in France, Trove (in Australia), and Canadiana Discovery Portal (in Canada). Gallica
provides access to over 870,000 images, 44,000 manuscripts, and 22,000 music scores, etc.43 The
Canadiana Discovery Portal includes The Héritage project, a 10-year initiative “to digitize and make
accessible online some of Canada’s most popular archival collections encompassing roughly 60 million
pages of primary-source documents.”44 Trove, developed by the National Library of Australia as “a
discovery experience focused on Australia and Australians,” provides access to a number of archival and
primary sources, including Australian newspapers digitized under the Australian Newspapers Digitization
Program (ANDP).45
The growth of digital preservation infrastructure is not limited to Western Europe and America.
For example, in 2002, Russia launched its first major digital library, namely the “Feb-web” or
Фундаментальная электронная библиотека "Русская литература и фольклор" (ФЭБ) (The
Fundamental Russian Library of Literature and Folklore).46 As digital infrastructure expands into
emerging markets and the information landscape widens in the world, non-English digital content will
increase substantially.47
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Conclusion
Despite dramatic growth of the Internet, digital infrastructure, and the explosion of social media, equal
and unfettered access to global information remains a challenge. There is no doubt that the Internet
“globalizes the local and localizes the global” and its importance in our everyday lives cannot be
ignored.48 Nevertheless, there are some factors that undermine the global spread of information and its
flow. Challenges include, but are not limited to, monopoly of online-search market and alleged search
bias of some Western companies, state censorship and control of the Internet, especially in East Asia
and the Middle East, modest or minuscule contributions in the area of digital and online content
creation provided by developing countries, and an unbalanced flow of information still favoring the
developed parts of the world (often referred to as a north/south inequity paradigm).
However, there seems to be a greater appreciation and understanding of international
information and information resources as significant components of global knowledge. Additionally, the
globalization of higher education in Europe and the United States has become almost a strategic
mandate. There is also increased awareness of local and regional culture and history and the need to
preserve it, if possible, in a digital format so it can be shared with the rest of the world. It is critical that
such initiatives should be developed by local communities, aided by the West, so the ownership of
digitized cultural heritage remains with local communities and their cultural and educational
institutions.49
Finally, there is the question of dominance, if not monopoly, of American Internet companies
and their technological superiority. As long as there is awareness of, what some perceive as
monopolistic practices of American search engine companies, and the willingness to challenge it as well
as healthy competition among American, European, and Asian digital content creators and search
engine companies, there will be some guarantee that information created and retrieved is truly diverse
and international in nature and not “viewed” through just one particular set of “lens.”50 But blaming
10
American “bias” for all the inequities of the Internet overlooks the fact that the United States remains
one of the strongest supporters of the freedom of expression. State control and censorship of
information and the Internet is still applied by many governments as a powerful tool of controlling their
societies. In addition to a north/south inequity paradigm we have to face another disparity, namely
uncensored/censored paradigm, which needs to be opposed as strongly as any economic
inequality.51
1
The words digital and online, while referring to information accessible through a computer or mobile device,
seem to be now used almost interchangeably. For example, the journal Online Information Review has the
following subtitle: the International Journal of Digital Information Research and Use.
Mark Warschauer, “Digital Divide,” in Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science, Third Edition (Taylor and
Francis: New York) Published online: 29 Aug 2011; 1551-1556.
2
“ComScore Releases ‘2013 Latin American Digital Future in Focus,’” OCLC Abstracts vol. 16, no. 22 (2013).
3
Ibid.
4
David Pearson, Books as History, Revised Edition (London: The British Library and Oak Knoll Press, 2012): 19.
5
Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project, “Search Engine Use 2012,”
http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Search-Engine-Use-2012.aspx (accessed June 12, 2013)
6
Ibid.
7
Ibid.
8
Kevin J O’Brien, “Executives Press European Antitrust on Google,” The New York Times, March 21, 2013. The
European Commission claims that “for its general web search services (so-called “horizontal” search), Google has a
market share of 90 percent in the European Economic Area (EEA).” See, “Antitrust: Commission Seeks Feedback
on Commitments Offered by Google to Address Competition Concerns,” Europa Press Releases, April 25, 2013,
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-13-371_en.htm (accessed June 17, 2013)
Danny Sullivan, “Google still the World’s Most Popular Search Engine by far,” http://searchengineland.com/googleworlds-most-popular-search-engine-148089 (accessed June 5, 2013). Although Russian search engine Yandex has
more than 60 percent of the search market in Russia and China’s Baidu dominates Chinese search market, their
share of the global search landscape is relatively small, 8.2 percent claimed by Baidu and 2.8 percent by Yandex.
9
Siva Vaidhyanathan, The Googlization of Everything (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011): xi.
11
10
Craig Timberg, “Europe Gains Better Settlement in Google Antitrust Probe,” Chicago Tribune, May 12, 2013.
“Antitrust: Commission Probes Allegations of Antitrust Violations by Google,” Europa Press Releases, November
30, 2010, http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-10-1624_en.htm (accessed June 14, 2013) TFEU stands for the
Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.
12
Ibid.
13
“Statement by Vice President Almunia on the Google Investigation,” Europa Press Releases, December 18, 2012,
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-12-967_en.htm (accessed June 14, 2013) See also Almunia’s speech
of May 21, 2012, in which he gave a detailed account of the four concerns “where Google business practices may
be considered as abuses of dominance.” “Joaquin Almunia Vice President of the European Commission
responsible for Competition Policy Statement of VP Almunia of the Google Antitrust Investigation,” Europa Press
Releases, May 21, 2012, http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-12-372_en.htm (accessed June 14, 2013)
14
“Statement by Vice President Almunia on the Google Investigation,” Europa Press Releases, December 18, 2012,
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-12-967_en.htm (accessed June 14, 2013)
15
“Antitrust: Commission Seeks Feedback on Commitments Offered by Google to Address Competition Concerns,”
Europa Press Releases, April 25, 2013, http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-13-371_en.htm (accessed June 17,
2013) The full version of the commitments proposed by Google is available on the website of the European
Commission Directorate-General for Competition:
http://ec.europa.eu/competition/elojade/isef/case_details.cfm?proc_code=1_39740
16
“Antitrust: Commission Seeks Feedback on Commitments Offered by Google to Address Competition Concerns,”
Europa Press Releases, April 25, 2013, http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-13-371_en.htm (accessed June 17,
2013)
17
Ibid.
18
James Kanter, “Europe Nears Antitrust Deal with Google over Web Searches,” The New York Times, April 25,
2013.
19
Frances Robinson, “EU Antitrust Agency to Decide Google Case Soon,” The Wall Street Journal, September 13,
2013, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323392204579072543246068408.html (accessed
September 13, 2013)
20
Timberg, “Europe Gains Better Settlement in Google Antitrust Probe.”
21
For example, see Congressional-Executive Commission on China, “Hearing before the Congressional-Executive
Commission on China: One Hundred Eleventh Congress: Second Session, March 24, 2010, Google and Internet
Control in China: A Nexus Between Human Rights and Trade?” http://www.cecc.gov (accessed June 20, 2013)
22
For recent controversy surrounding NSA surveillance programs see, Peter Eisler and Susan Page, “We Told You
So,” USA Today, June 17, 2013.
23
Danny Friedmann, “Paradoxes, Google and China,” in Aurelio Lopez-Tarruella, ed., Google and the Law (The
Hague: T.M.C. Asser Press, 2012): 323.
24
Ibid., 320. Other countries notorious for censoring their Internet include Syria, Vietnam, North Korea, etc. See
annual lists of “Enemies of the Internet” released by Reporters Without Borders, http://en.rsf.org/internet.html
(accessed June 20, 2013)
25
Congressional-Executive Commission on China, One Hundred Eleventh Congress, Second Session, March 24,
2010, “Google and Internet Control in China,” http://www.cecc.gov (accessed June 20, 2013)
26
Ibid.
27
As stated by Alan Davidson, Director of U.S. Public Policy, Americas, Google, Inc. Ibid.
28
See search results for “Falun Gong” in google.com and baidu.com (accessed September 7, 2013)
29
See search results for “Falun Gong” in yandex.com (accessed September 7, 2013)
30
See search results for “Tibet” in google.com and baidu.com (accessed September 7, 2013).
31
The Global Dimensions of Scholarship and Research Libraries: A Forum on the Future
http://www.crl.edu/events/8478 (accessed September 9, 2013)
32
Chris Bourg, “How Global is Your Library?” http://taiga-forum.org/how-global-is-your-library (accessed
September 9, 2013)
33
See “Preliminary Conference Report” at http://www.crl.edu/events/8478 (accessed September 9, 2013)
34
Ibid.
11
12
35
Boniface Omachonu Omatta, “The Ethics of Representation and the Internet,” in Robert S. Fortner, ed., The
Handbook of Global Communication and Media Ethics (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011): 800.
36
“ALC Response to Global Forum Report.” I am grateful to Al Kagan, recently retired African Studies Bibliographer
at the University of Illinois Library, for sharing the document with me.
37
Ibid.
38
Ibid.
39
Ibid.
40
See, Helaine Silverman, ed., Contested Cultural Heritage: Religion, Nationalism, Erasure, and Exclusion in a
Global World (New York: Springer, 2011). See also, “UNESCO World Heritage List” http://whc.unesco.org/en/list
(accessed September 9, 2013)
41
Europeana http://www.europeana.eu (accessed September 9, 2013); The European Library
http://www.theeuropeanlibrary.org (accessed September 9, 2013)
42
The UK consortium of scholarly libraries, Research Libraries UK (RLUK), has recently joined The European Library.
43
Ibid.
44
“Héritage Project Launched” http://www.canadiana.ca/en/heritage-project (accessed September 9, 2013)
45
“Trove Digitized Newspapers” http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/about (accessed September 9, 2013)
46
The Fundamental Digital Library of Russian Literature and Folklore http://feb-web.ru/indexen.htm (accessed
September 10, 2013)
47
See some examples of Internet resources compiled by Tina Baich. They are, however, mostly Western European
and North American. Tina Baich, “The Global Research Landscape,” College and Research Libraries News 74, no. 5
(May 2013): 243-248.
48
Omatta, “The Ethics of Representation and the Internet,” p. 785.
49
Thus the importance of developing “agreements and best practices in connection with intellectual property and
copyright” between “north” and “south.” See, “ALC Response to Global Forum Report.”
50
Vaidhyanathan, The Googlization of Everything, xi.
51
Unfortunately, recent revelations about secret government spying programs and the alleged participation of
some American Internet companies may undermine America’s role as the champion of freedom of expression on
the Internet. For example, see, Michael Winter, “NSA Cracks Internet Privacy,” USA Today, September 6-8, 2013.