Developmental Idealism in Internet Search Data

Abstract

Existing scholarship on developmental idealism demonstrates that ordinary people around the world tend to perceive the level of development and characteristics of different countries similarly. We build on this literature by examining publics' perceptions of nations and development in internet search data, which we argue offers additional insights into publics' perceptions that survey data does not address. Our analysis finds that developmental idealism is prevalent in international internet searches about countries. A consistent mental image of national development emerges from the traits publics ascribe to countries in internet searches. We find a positive relationship between the sentiment expressed in Google searches about a given country and its position in the global developmental hierarchy. Diverse publics consistently associate positive attributes to countries ranked high on global development indices and negative characteristics to countries ranked low. We also find a positive correlation between the number of internet searches about a country and the country's position in indices of global development. These findings illustrate that ordinary people have deeply internalized developmental idealism and that this informs their views about countries worldwide.

Developmental idealism and migration: theorizing their relationship and an empirical example from Nepal

“…There is also a substantial ethnographic literature showing that many DI worldviews, values, and beliefs have spread to the grassroots in many places around the world (Ahearn, 2001;Dahl & Rabo, 1992;Hoang, 2014;James Ferguson, 1999;Jayakody, 2019;Osella & Osella, 2006;Stacy Leigh Pigg, 1992). Similarly, recent survey research and investigation of internet searches have documented widespread shared beliefs in a similar hierarchy of nations by their level of development (Binstock & Thornton, 2007;Dorius, 2016;Dorius & Swindle, 2019;Melegh, 2012;Melegh et al, 2013;Thornton et al, 2012a;Xie et al, 2012). Survey research has also documented widespread beliefs among many ordinary people around the world that development is closely connected to many aspects of family life, as well as political freedoms, including democracy and respect for human rights (Abbasi-Shavazi et al, 2012;Allendorf, 2013;Binstock & Thornton, 2007;Gjonça & Thornton, 2019;Kavas & Thornton, 2020;Lai & Thornton, 2015;Thornton et al, 2012bThornton et al, , 2017Thornton et al, , 2012cThornton et al, , 2014.…”