Freedom of expression index (V-Dem)

How free the press, the media and ordinary people are to speak, from 0 to 1.

The V-Dem freedom of expression and alternative sources of information index measures how far the government respects press and media freedom, how free people are to discuss politics at home and in public, how free academic and cultural expression is, and how far the media offer a range of views. It runs from 0 (least free) to 1 (most free). Like the other V-Dem indices, it combines the ratings of thousands of country experts through a statistical model. Our World in Data republishes the central estimates.

World map · Freedom of expression index

Year

Source: V-Dem (2026) – processed by Our World in Data (updated 2026-03-17) · fetched 29 Oct 2026

Over time · Freedom of expression index

Source: V-Dem (2026) – processed by Our World in Data (updated 2026-03-17) · fetched 29 Oct 2026

Years

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All countries · Freedom of expression index

Continent Year

Source: V-Dem (2026) – processed by Our World in Data (updated 2026-03-17) · fetched 29 Oct 2026

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Every country and year, with the source on each row.

About the author

Hello there, I’m Klaus Jürgen Folz. I studied Mechanical Engineering at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) in Brazil, and I work in Austria as a lead Python and Power BI developer. I built Data Mechanics because good decisions start with facts. Public data is often scattered, hard to find or locked behind paywalls, and too much of what we read about the world is biased. Here, every number is shown as it was published, next to its source, so anyone can check it, compare countries and leaders, and draw their own conclusions.

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