Benchmarking Demand: Pakistan and the Internet Users’ Perspective

This report is the third in a series that examines public attitudes and preferences about Internet censorship and regulation in states in which media and Internet use are subject to increasing restrictions. In the context of Pakistan, where rapid increases in internet access and usage are accompanied by a propensity to regulate this new cyber-territory, the goal of this report is to uncover the views of Pakistani Internet users with respect to the regulation and control of online spaces. In each of these reports, we seek to provide insight into who uses the Internet in each country and the most used and trusted sources of online and offline information. But more than that, the surveys seek to add to a process: learning how to plumb general views about the influence of the Internet on politics and society and chart attitudes concerning censorship on various political, religious and social grounds. The reports test an approach to determining who, among competing institutions, people trust to regulate the Internet, what constitutes their policy preferences about Internet regulation, and the extent to which Internet regulation issues might figure in political mobilization efforts in furtherance of Internet freedom