From Bentham to Sen, philosophers, and political economists have agreed that access to government information is critical for democracy and development. In the past two decades, both democratic and authoritarian governments have adopted freedom of information acts (FOIA) that enables citizens to ask for specific information of their interest that the government holds. Many scholars studied why governments pass the legislation that subjects them to greater scrutiny. However, studies exploring what citizens seek to know once they have the legal right to do so are scarce. Understanding the public demand for government information is essential for assessing if FOIA is implemented as intended and fulfils its democratic oversight function.

I study the public demand for the UK central government’s information using the data from Whatdotheyknow.com, an online participation platform for submitting information requests. Using unsupervised learning techniques, I analysed the texts of all information requests sent to the central government bodies through this platform since its start in 2008 to the end of 2017, over 37 000 requests in total. I explored the proportion of the topics within these requests and if the government is more likely to reject the requests on some topics than others. I found that the majority of requesters are pursuing information in their private rather than public interest. These results suggest that FOIA is used differently than initially intended, but also point to the systematic failures of certain public bodies to respect other citizens’ rights.