Abstract

This exploratory paper attempts to describe the status of the international digital divide in the Mediterranean area. To do so, it has assembled data on the level of Internet penetration in the Union for the Mediterranean (UM), Some non-littoral UM states were included for purposes of comparison, as were a number of EU non-UM states. Finally, a small number of non UM, non EU, OECD members were included, again for benchmarking purposes. In all, 27 countries were studied, 21 of them Mediterranean littoral states and 6 not. Internet penetration was evaluated in terms of Internet penetration (number of users relative to population), number of Internet hosts relative to population, broadband subscribers relative to population, Digital Opportunity Index score (DOI), and Change in DOI. score. These measures were used to assign the countries involved to tier levels for each measure. The individual tier measures were then averaged to provide an overall tier ranking for each country; the rankings defined are Upper, Upper Middle, Lower Middle, and Lower. . The major findings are that there are clear distinctions between the Upper Tier consists primarily of the benchmark states; the Upper Middle tier contains mainly Northern Mediterranean littoral states; the Lower Middle Tier comprise mainly Eastern Mediterranean littoral states, while the Lower tier consists of littoral states dispersed throughout the Mediterranean. A conclusion is that the UM contains states at all levels of Internet development, and that the higher level states in that grouping could greatly assist the lower level ones in addressing the digital divider.

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