The world is not flat: Evaluating the inequality in global information gatekeeping through website co-mentions

•American websites were located at the center of global network.•The network at the level of corporate ownership was centralized.•Google, Facebook, and Twitter occupied > 70% of the ties.•The aggregated analyses revealed two clusters of websites.•The clusters were owned by American and Chinese companies.

This study explores inequality in global internet by looking at structure of co-mentions across global top website domains. Findings show that websites of the U.S. were central and dominant in the global content flow. The network based on the level of corporate ownership was even more centralized, in which the top 10 sites producing at least 1% of all Internet citations were from U.S.-based companies such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter, which together accounted for > 70% of the network ties. In particular, Google was at the center of the network and serves as the Internet “gatekeeper”. Additionally, the global web is divided into two clusters of websites, one represented by websites owned by American firms and the other by Chinese companies. The study discusses how such divide might be the outcome of geopolitics, internet governance and media conglomeration.