Governmental Structures, Social Inclusion, and the Digital Divide: A discourse on the affinity between the effects of freedom and access to online information resources

"The story of the next century is the transition from an industrial, resource-based economy, to a knowledge economy. An industrial economy is zero sum. If you own an oil field, I cannot go in that same oil field. But knowledge works differently. If you know something, then you can share that -- and then the whole world gets richer" (Levy, 2013). This is a quote from Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook.;For much of the developed world, the internet is a tool that sees daily use. However, this is not true for over 60% of the world, with only 32.61% of the people in the world having access to materials available online.;This digital divide between those with technology and those without is an important topic in this information society that only a few select countries are included in. By reviewing the variables that influence the divide, researchers can assist policy makers in making better informed decisions in terms of investment opportunities in order to garner the greatest return on that investment.;This study discovers the level of relationship between democracy and access to online information. It defines democracy using freedom ratings from Freedom House, as well as economic factors, such as Gross Domestic Product and Foreign Direct Investment. It then explores the relationship between democracy and the level of access to online information using an ordinary least squares regression model. The level of access to online information was defined as the number of the internet users per capita within a country. The strength of the relationship indicated that this definition explained ~57% of the interaction between these variables.;By determining this level of relationship, policy makers can then make a better informed decision while deciding on methods to bridge the digital divide. In determining which factors can be adjusted by outside stakeholders, such as access to technology, and those factors which cannot, such as levels of democracy, policy makers can determine methods to increase their impact in narrowing the digital divide.