DHL Global Connectedness Index 2014

50 3. The Depth of Global Connectedness
Figure 3.8 FDI Outward Stock as Percentage of
World GDP, 1913 – 2013 31
40%
35%
30%
25%
20%
15%
10%
5%
0%
1910 1930 1950 1970 1990 2010
FDI outward stocks as a percentage of world GDP were larger in 2013
than in any other year they were measured as far back as 1910.
international connectivity rather than actual international
communications. It is included in the DHL Global Connectedness
Index as a proxy for international internet
traffic because data on the latter are not available on a
country-by-country basis. However, the international share
of internet traffic on a global basis is estimated at roughly
17%. 32 The explosive growth of international internet bandwidth
has not been accompanied by a similar rise in the
international share of internet traffic.
Analyses of social network traffic indicate that while the
internet is a global network, it is used primarily to transmit
information within national borders. A published
estimate indicates that only 16% of Facebook friends are
located across national borders, 33 and newer unpublished
research points toward an even lower share, only 10%–15%.
Just because we are notionally able to befriend anyone,
anywhere, anytime on Facebook doesn’t mean we will:
the technology is being superimposed on a “social graph,”
which already exists and conforms closely to physical and
political geography. Thus, researchers have concluded that
Facebook has a “strongly modular network structure at the
scale of countries.” 34
Information flows on Twitter are more international than
those on Facebook, with an estimated 25% of Twitter followers
located in different countries from the people they follow.
Nonetheless, only 14% of followers are located in a foreign
country that doesn’t share the same dominant language. 35
Followers who re-tweet a user’s tweets are also more likely to
be domestic than followers who do not re-tweet. 36
Research on other forms of communication over the internet
also backstops the conclusion that people primarily
use the internet to communicate domestically rather than
across international borders. A study of instant messages
on MSN Messenger showed that users who communicated
with each other were 16 times more likely to be in the
same country (and 27 times more likely to speak the same
language) than users who did not. 37 Email exchanges on
Yahoo Mail are also significantly more intense among users
who are geographically proximate and share cultural ties. 38
Turning to the other components of the information pillar,
the depth of international telephone call minutes also rose
dramatically from 2005 to 2012 (2013 data were not available
as of this writing). The depth of international telephone
call minutes is measured here in minutes per capita
because the preferable normalization (international share
of total minutes) is not available on a country-by-country
basis. Nonetheless, on a global basis, the international
share of total telephone calling minutes is roughly 2% over
standard telephone lines and 3%–4% including calls placed
over the internet. 39
The data used in this report to calculate the depth of international
telephone calls include both calls placed over fixed
and mobile telephone networks (TDM traffic) as well as
calls that are routed over the internet (VoIP traffic) but terminate
on fixed or mobile telephone networks (such as calls
from Skype to fixed and mobile phones). However, they do
not include computer-to-computer calls (e.g., Skype-to-
Skype calls). In 2012, Skype-to-Skype calls accounted for
about one quarter of all international calling minutes. 40
These are excluded from the index because country-bycountry
data are not available on such calls.
On average, people spoke on international telephone calls
for 152 minutes during 2012, up from 88 minutes in 2005
(doubling the number of outbound minutes shown in Figure
3.9 to account for time people spend on both outbound
and inbound calls). While these figures do reflect very substantial
growth (8% CAGR over 2005–2012), they indicate