In the digital context, this means technical access to the mass medium called the Internet. In Germany, according to an ARD/ZDF online study in 2016, almost 60 million people have access to the World Wide Web - via DSL, Wi-Fi, mobile network, fibre optic network and so on. This is about 77 per cent of the German population. Ten years ago, only every second German had access to the net, in 2001 the figure was as low as 37 percent.