The politics of internet freedom rankings

Abstract

International rankings play an active role in defining the issue they claim to capture and giving the issue salience by presenting it as a matter of global concern. As internet access expanded globally, the past two decades have seen a rapid proliferation of indexes measuring and comparing the state of internet freedom around the globe. This article examines the politics of these rankings, e.g. Freedom House’s Freedom on the Net, that have become powerful “global pattern-setters” for how internet freedom is understood and are used as tools of political or diplomatic influence. We adopt a relational approach to explain how and why such a complex landscape of internet freedom rankings has emerged and identify how the ranking organisations’ varying approaches to capturing internet freedom have played a role in defining and legitimating it as an issue of importance. Since both the uses of the internet and discussions about defining what freedom means in relation to it have developed so rapidly, we argue that the complexity of internet freedom poses unique challenges and has required ranking organisations to continually respond to these developments, negotiating their authority in relation to other actors in their field.

Keywords

• Rankings
• Digital rights
• Framing
• Internet freedom
• Democracy