Joblessness + Phone ownership = Unrest?

Here is an interesting graph I pulled together in the course of a project I am working on. It uses data from the World Bank (for the phone subscriptions data) and the ILO and others for youth unemployment. It plots youth unemployment rates against mobile phone ownership (subscriptions per 100 people). Countries above the line have disproportionately high mobile phone ownership given their rate of unemployment: in other words their people are both jobless and well-connected: to one another and the outside world (A recent survey showed that 45% of people in the Middle East use their phones to access the internet).

Next speaking

I'm speaking next Monday morning - on Lawrence of Arabia and World War One - at 9.15 am at this year's Christ Church Oxford Conflict conference, on the Making of the Modern Middle East. It's still possible to come for my talk, and any of the others - more details of how to do so can be found here.