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Local Internet Content

Data on the volume of local internet content (LIC). They are based on the UK Web Archive (https://www.webarchive.org.uk/), which draws data from the Internet Archive, and measure the volume of archived online content of local interest at the MSOA/IZ level during the 2002-2012 period.

Please see the PDF data item listed here, for full details of the dataset, and references. The following is a summary of the PDF:

Each entry of the JISC UK Web Domain Dataset (https://data.webarchive.org.uk/opendata/ukwa.ds.2/) (Jackson, 2017), which is a subset of the Internet Archive and curated by the British Library and includes all the archived webpages under the .uk top level domain, contains a timestamp, the URL of the archived website as well as the British postcode found on each site.

We can use this dataset to derive a measure for how much local internet content (hereafter LIC, Tranos & Stich 2019) there exists across the UK. However, the dataset includes websites with differing geographic reach; some websites may refer to single postcode, while others may refer to several postcodes all over the UK. As described in Tranos and Stich, 2019, this poses a problem when trying to ascertain whether localised internet content is a driver of online behaviour.

We thus need a way to discount websites that have less of a local focus. The underlying idea is that websites that have a high geographic dispersion are less “local”. To compute the geographic dispersion of a websites’ set of postcodes p we calculate the Radius of Gyration (RG) of p in kilometres. A website with a high RG will be of national interest, while a website with a low RG will have a very local geographic presence.

As local geographical units we utilise the Middle Layer Super Output Areas (MSOA) for England and the Intermediate Zones (IZ) for Scotland. For each MSOA/IZ with a set W of archived websites we calculate yearly measures of the volume of LIC.

Controller: 
University College London (UCL)
Additional Info: 
FieldValue

DOI

10.20390/localinternetcontent

Citation

Tranos, E. & Stich, C. (2019). Individual internet usage and the availability of online content of local interest: a multilevel approach. CEUS, in print.

Attribution

Created by Emmanouil Tranos and Christoph Stich.

Interactive Map

https://mapmaker.cdrc.ac.uk/#/local-internet-content?m=lic2012

Source

JISC UK Web Domain Dataset

Collecting Date

2019-08-06

FieldValue
Modified
2022-06-01
Release Date
2020-02-04
Spatial / Geographical Coverage Location
Great Britain
Granularity
MSOA/IZ
Author
Emmanouil Tranos and Christoph Stich
Contact Name
Emmanouil Tranos
Contact Email
POLYGON ((-8.9948498999 49.688302644, 2.0867431164 49.688302644, 2.0867431164 61.0684288668, -8.9948498999 61.0684288668, -8.9948498999 49.688302644))
UK Open Government Licence (OGL)

Data Extent

License

UK Open Government Licence (OGL)