Sarah Logan and Joseph Suwamaru, ‘Land of the Disconnected: A History of the Internet in Papua New Guinea’, in Gerald Goggin and Mark McLelland, eds, The Routledge Companion to Global Internet Histories, Abingdon: Routledge, 2017.

Internet scholarship has largely focused on countries with long telecommunications histories. Rarely do such studies focus on countries which are younger than the Internet itself, although it is these which arguably experience the greatest change as a result of this technology. Papua New Guinea (PNG) is one such country: gaining independence in 1975, its population only acquired widespread access to the Internet in 2007. Prior to this, Internet penetration was close to zero, and the country had very limited national press, TV, and radio networks, and little access to international media. This means that even though Internet access is still limited, with less than 10 percent penetration, PNG has experienced a massive upheaval in its national telecommunications landscape as a result.