This blog is intended to go along with Population: An Introduction to Concepts and Issues, by John R. Weeks, published by Cengage Learning. The latest edition is the 13th (it will be out in January 2020), but this blog is meant to complement any edition of the book by showing the way in which demographic issues are regularly in the news.

You can download an iPhone app for the 13th edition from the App Store (search for Weeks Population).

If you are a user of my textbook and would like to suggest a blog post idea, please email me at: john.weeks@sdsu.edu

Thursday, December 16, 2010

The World According to Facebook

I have already commented on the size of the Facebook "nation." Now it turns out that a Facebook intern has assembled Facebook data to find the linkages between Facebook friends. The result is an amazing map of the world according to Facebook. The linkages clearly define most of the heavily populated areas of the world. China is dark because of its censorship, and sub-Saharan Africa looks sparse because it is not yet well connected to the internet. With the exception of China, this map is amazingly like the NOAA map of nighttime lights--both of them showing where there are people with enough money to have electricity and an internet presence.

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