Freedom of expression & alternative sources of information
index 0–1
- Published value. Native scale: 0 (least free) to 1 (most free).
- Transform: value (no transform).
- Goalposts (fixed for all years; 2.5th and 97.5th percentiles of all observed country-years): worst = 0.032 scores 0, best = 0.976 scores 100.
- Direction: higher is better, no flip.
- Clip and scale: anything below the worst goalpost scores 0 and anything above the best scores 100; multiply by 100.
Where the numbers come from
- V-Dem Institute, Varieties of Democracy dataset v15 (index v2x_freexp_altinf) produces the series — Expert-coded: country experts answer questions on media censorship, harassment of journalists, and freedom of academic, cultural and political discussion; a Bayesian measurement model combines them into one 0–1 index.
- Our World in Data grapher export republishes unchanged — Republishes the V-Dem series unchanged with ISO country codes; we download its CSV.
Source statement as published by the data provider (verbatim)
V-Dem Institute, V-Dem Dataset v15, variable v2x_freexp_altinf (best estimate), republished by Our World in Data
Extent to which government respects press and media freedom, the freedom of ordinary people to discuss political matters at home and in the public sphere, and the freedom of academic and cultural expression. Scale 0 (low) to 1 (high).
Every country row below has a “verify” link to this series filtered to that country, so each value can be checked against the source.
History
Countries ranked on this indicator
173 countries have a usable value for 2024 (0 carried forward from an earlier year); 44 have none within 2 years.
No official value for 2024: 44 countries
Aruba, Andorra, American Samoa, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, The, Belize, Bermuda, Brunei Darussalam, Channel Islands, Curacao, Cayman Islands, Dominica, Faroe Islands, Micronesia, Fed. Sts., Gibraltar, Grenada, Greenland, Guam, Isle of Man, Kiribati, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, Liechtenstein, Macao SAR, China, St. Martin (French part), Monaco, Marshall Islands, Northern Mariana Islands, New Caledonia, Naoero, Palau, Puerto Rico (US), West Bank and Gaza, French Polynesia, San Marino, Sint Maarten (Dutch part), Turks and Caicos Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, British Virgin Islands, Virgin Islands (U.S.), Samoa, Kosovo