How Do Global Audiences Take Shape? The Role of Institutions and Culture in Patterns of Web Use

TL;DR

This paper explores how cultural and institutional factors influence global web audience patterns, revealing that language and geography are stronger predictors of audience overlap than hyperlinks or genre, emphasizing cultural structures' importance.

Contribution

It combines media choice and cultural consumption theories to analyze global audience overlaps, highlighting the dominant role of language and geography over technological links.

Findings

Language and geographic similarities predict audience overlap more than hyperlinks.

Cultural structures significantly shape global media consumption patterns.

Hyperlinks and genre are less influential than cultural factors.

Abstract

This study investigates the role of both cultural and technological factors in determining audience formation on a global scale. It integrates theories of media choice with theories of global cultural consumption and tests them by analyzing shared audience traffic between the world's 1000 most popular Websites. We find that language and geographic similarities are more powerful predictors of audience overlap than hyperlinks and genre similarity, highlighting the role of cultural structures in shaping global media use.