Internet Monitor

Internet Monitor is a research project based at Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet & Society. Internet Monitor's aim is to evaluate, describe, and summarize the means, mechanisms, and extent of Internet content controls and Internet activity around the world. The project helps researchers, advocates, policymakers, and user communities understand trends in Internet health and activity through research, analysis, and data visualization.

Internet Monitor has three components:

  • The Internet Monitor platform and Access Index (launched in July 2014) give policy makers, digital activists, researchers, and user communities an authoritative, independent, and multi-faceted set of quantitative data on the state of the global Internet. The platform brings together 15 indicators on Internet access and infrastructure to create the Internet Monitor Access Index, which offers a starting point for further analysis of Internet access conditions in 92 countries.
  • The Internet Monitor research series provides expert analysis on the state of the global Internet, focusing on notable events and trends in the digital space.
  • The Internet Monitor dashboard (launched in September 2015) offers users the opportunity to customize a collection of data visualization “widgets” according to their interest. The dashboard compiles and curates data from multiple sources, including primary data collected by the Berkman Center and our partners, as well as relevant secondary data. Users can create individual boards that provide a real-time view of the state of the Internet across a variety of dimensions, enable easy comparisons across countries and data sources, and are easy to configure, edit, and share.

Internet Monitor brings together data from Akamai, Change.org, Global Voices, Google, GSMA Intelligence, Herdict, the ITU, Kaspersky, Lumen, Media Cloud, NetIndex, the OpenNet Initiative, Tor, Wikipedia, the World Bank, the United Nations, and others.