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

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.