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Methodology

Download our “Guideline for Test List Researchers” for instructions on how to add fresh websites to individual country lists, clean existing lists from bad URLs, and balance the lists. This succinct guideline provides step-by-step instructions but does not go into detailed explanation of various phenomena.

For more details regarding each aspect of the test list update process, please refer to the “Complete Guide for Updating Citizen Lab Test Lists”.

Download “Guideline for Test List Researchers” (.pdf document)

Download our “Complete Guideline for Updating Citizen Lab Test Lists” for detailed and in-depth information you will need to update the URL test list of your country. This guideline is designed for non-tech-savvy researchers. It explains in a simple language and in great detail how blocking of websites occurs; how to measure it with OONI Probe; structure and organization of test lists; how to provide a comprehensive or partial update of test lists; how to set up new or custom test lists; strategies to maintain test lists in optimal condition for testing and much more!

Disclaimer: the guideline currently undergoes peer-review and will be further improved upon completion of the review process.

Download “Complete Guideline for Updating Citizen Lab Test Lists” (.pdf document)

Methodology

Conferences & Presentations

Custom Test Lists

Resources

Custom Test Lists

Internet censorship is often described as a “cat and mouse” game where “cats” (states) constantly invent methods and technologies to block access to online content, whereas “mice” (Internet freedom actors) try to counteract their efforts with innovative technologies.

In such dynamically changing Internet environment, researchers rely more often now on custom test lists that are tailored to answer specific research questions, rather than using the standard country lists.

Here, you will find curated test lists and methodologies developed by researchers to examine specific features of Internet censorship regimes in various parts of the world.

Project: Internet blocking during 2018 Russian presidential elections

Authors: Igor Valentovitch and Ksenia Ermoshina

Resume: In their paper, Igor and Ksenia investigate if 2018 Russian presidential elections affected Internet freedom in Russia and Crimea, and if Internet censorship was experienced in the same way in both territories.

They found no empirical evidence suggesting that the elections caused filtering of critical or liberal resources in both territories. Platforms that were blocked before the elections, remained inaccessible during and after them.

However, Igor and Ksenia discovered that blocking of critical content was not carried out uniformly in mainland Russia and Crimea. Instead, they documented cases of under-blocking and over-blocking of websites to occur on the networks of various ISPs, which made them conclude that Internet filtering in Russia is not uniform across the board.

Methodology: The researchers conducted daily network measurements for four months – before, during and after the elections. They set up a custom test list of critical websites that were either blocked by the Russian telecommunications authority or had a high probability of being blocked during the elections. The network measurements were conducted with OONI Probes on the networks of 70+ ISPs

Download here Russia Custom Test List

More Resources

Internet Censorship Measurement

Updated Test List

Regional Test List

Updating Citizen Lab Test Lists

Projects

Our main project – Improving Test Lists of Censored Online Content – aims to update the largest database (aka Citizen Lab Test Lists) that network measurement tools use to uncover blocking of websites in 200+ countries.

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Building Regional Test Lists

Projects

Netalitica has set up test lists for entire regions. They offer the opportunity to determine the accessibility of online platforms that are popular across multiple countries in a given geographical location.

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Updated Test Lists

Resources

Updated Test Lists

Netalitica has updated the test lists for 48 known rivals of Internet freedom from Asia, Africa, MENA, CIS and Latin America. We have also updated the lists for Poland and Hungary with other European democracies to follow soon. The updated lists are available on Github but can also be downloaded here (click on the map).

More Resources

Internet Censorship Measurement

Regional Test List

Custom Test List

Updating Citizen Lab Test Lists

Projects

LEARN MORE

Building Regional Test Lists

Projects

LEARN MORE

Internet Censorship Measurement

Resources

Internet Censorship Measurement

Internet censorship is broadly defined as blocking access to websites, Internet outages and shutdowns, online trolling and self-censorship online. Netalitica focuses on investigating Internet blocking occurring on the network level such as blocking of websites and applications by local Internet Service Providers (ISPs).

In authoritarian states, ISPs fulfill “requests” from authorities to block access to specific content for political, economic, religious and other reasons. Democratic and authoritarian countries alike may adopt restrictive Internet legislations that oblige local ISPs to block access to certain content (e.g. child pornography, hate speech, terrorist and militant websites) in order to protect society. Such legislations may be vaguely formulated, thus leaving room for blocking liberal voices as well.

OpenNet Initiative, ONI Access and Freedom House provide great overview of the censorship regimes in countries around the world. Other useful sources include Citizen Lab , Reporters Without Borders, Article 19, Internet Monitor.

ISPs can block access to select websites by a variety of methods such as IP blocking, DNS tempering, HTTP blocking, SNI filtering. The Open Observatory for Network Interference (OONI) provides an overview of these techniques. Their open-source app OONI Probe represents the industry standard for measuring Internet censorship. It uses Citizen Lab test lists to uncover blocking of websites in more than 200 countries. Other popular network measurement projects include Censored Planet and ICLab.

Citizen Lab test lists are available for download on GitHub. Each country list is made of popular locally websites that are organized into 30 thematic categories encompassing all spheres of social life (e.g. environment, communication tools, economics, political criticism, human rights, news media, and others). Besides individual country lists, there is also the Global test list, which is made of websites that have universal usability (e.g. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, CNN, BBC, DW).

Staring in 2019, Netalitica has hired researchers to update the Citizen Lab test lists for 50 countries from Asia, Africa, MENA, CIS, Latin America and Europe. Our researchers clean existing lists from faulty URLs, add fresh websites and balance the lists to make sure all thematic categories are populated with websites.

More Resources

Updated Test Lists

Regional Test List

Custom Test List

Updating Citizen Lab Test Lists

Projects

LEARN MORE

Building Regional Test Lists

Projects

LEARN MORE

About us

About us

Netalitica focus

Netalitica is a research organization investigating information controls and Internet filtering in censorship hotspots around the world. Our main project – Improving Test Lists of Censored Online Content – aims to update the largest database (aka Citizen Lab Test Lists) that network measurement tools use to uncover blocking of websites in 200+ countries. Netalitica hires researchers to update local test lists. The latter are used by research institutions, think tanks and activists to probe for Internet censoring. To meet our project objectives, we partner with major stakeholders in the network measurement field such as Citizen Lab, Open Observatory for Network Interference and local digital rights organizations from Latin America, Africa, MENA, Asia, Europe and the CIS. So far, we have updated the test list of 50 states.