Freedom of expression

How this is measured

Built from expert ratings of government censorship of print and broadcast media, harassment of journalists, self-censorship, and whether academic and private political discussion happen without surveillance or reprisal. It asks what happens in practice, not what the constitution promises, which is why countries with strong free-speech clauses can still score badly. Because it is coded by country experts and then put through a measurement model, every value is an estimate with a credible interval around it. V-Dem publishes those intervals; this site shows only the point estimate, so how firm any single number is cannot be read off the screen. The intervals are wider where fewer experts coded a country and in the earlier centuries, which is exactly where the long series is most tempting to read closely.

163 countries and territories have a figure for 2025. This is the most recent year the series covers well; the viewer holds every year from 1789.

Data by year

Source and licence

Other personal statistics