Web Use Project: Papers

The Participation Divide: Content Creation and Sharing in the Digital Age

Wed, 02 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -500

This paper looks at the prevalence of creative activity and sharing in an age when the barriers to disseminating material have been considerably lowered compared to earlier times. We use unique data to explore the extent to which young adults create video, music, writing and artistic photography, as well as the prevalence of sharing such material online. Findings suggest that despite new opportunities to engage in such distribution of content, relatively few people are taking advantage of these recent developments. Moreover, neither creation nor sharing is randomly distributed among a diverse group of young adults. Consistent with existing literature, creative activity is related to a person?s socioeconomic status as measured by parental schooling. The novel act of sharing online, however, is considerably different with men much more likely to engage in it. However, once we control for Internet user skill, men and women are equally likely to post their materials on the Web.

Cross-Ideological Discussions among Conservative and Liberal Bloggers

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 05:00:00 -500

The Role of Expertise in Navigating Links of Influence

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -500

In this essay, I focus on how the influence of links may be mediated by the skills and expertise associated with using the Internet both from the content producer's and the content viewer's perspective. My main argument is that while lots of factors influence how links are presented on the Web and how users' respond to the content that shows up on their screens, an important and understudied aspect of navigating links of influence concerns people's Internet user abilities. Both content creators and content users (readers, listeners, viewers) can benefit from a more in-depth understanding of how the Web works. Since such skills are not randomly distributed among the population, certain content providers and content users stand a better chance of benefiting from the medium than others. Relevant know-how will help producers attract attention to their materials. Savvy about the medium will assist users in sidestepping potentially misleading and malicious content.

Whose Space? Differences Among Users and Non-Users of Social Network Sites

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 05:00:00 -500

Are there systematic differences between people who use social network sites and those who stay away, despite a familiarity with them? Based on data from a survey administered to a diverse group of young adults, this article looks at the predictors of SNS usage, with particular focus on Facebook, MySpace, Xanga, and Friendster. Findings suggest that use of such sites is not randomly distributed across a group of highly wired users. A person's gender, race and ethnicity, and parental educational background are all associated with use, but in most cases only when the aggregate concept of social network sites is disaggregated by service. Additionally, people with more experience and autonomy of use are more likely to be users of such sites. Unequal participation based on user background suggests that differential adoption of such services may be contributing to digital inequality.

The Social, Political, Economic, and Cultural Dimensions of Search Engines: An Introduction

Mon, 01 Jan 2007 00:00:00 -500

Search engines are some of the most popular destinations on the Web.understandably so, given the vast amounts of information available to users and the need for help in sifting through online content. While the results of significant technical achievements, search engines are also embedded in social processes and institutions that influence how they function and how they are used. This special theme section of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication explores these non-technical aspects of search engines and their uses.

Content Diversity Online: Myth or Reality?

Mon, 01 Jan 2007 00:00:00 -500

With literally billions of Web pages constituting the publicly available Web, it is reasonable to assume that diverse types of material are easily available to users. Nonetheless, it remains an empirical question to see whether people actually access the vast diversity of resources theoretically available to them online. In this chapter, I draw on data about people's actual online behavior to assess whether users visit diverse types of content on the Web or whether their online information-uses mirror off-line behaviors. Findings suggest that although people turn to a variety of sources for information online, their actions seem to resemble off-line media consumption patterns. I explore why these behaviors are not necessarily a reflection of user preferences, rather they are at least in part a function of how content is organized and presented online, and skill differences among users.

The Digital Divide and What To Do About It

Mon, 01 Jan 2007 00:00:00 -500

In a society where knowledge-intensive activities are an increasingly important component of the economy, the distribution of knowledge across the population is increasingly linked to stratification. Much attention among both academic researchers and in policy circles has been paid to what segments of the population have access to the Internet or are Internet users. Although the medium has seen high rates of diffusion, its spread has been unequal both within and across nations. In this chapter, I look at (a) individual-level inequality in Internet access and use in the United States, (b) cross-national variation in connectedness, and (c) inequality from the side of content producers in gaining audiences for their material online.

Music, Mavens and Technology

Mon, 01 Jan 2007 00:00:00 -500

A Framework for Studying Differences in People's Digital Media Uses

Mon, 01 Jan 2007 00:00:00 -500

Information technologies have become a staple of adolescents. lives with young people among the most connected in countries that have seen high levels of Internet and cell phone diffusion by the first decade of the 21st century (Livingstone and Bober 2004; National Telecommunications and Information Administration 2004). However, merely knowing various digital media.s rates of use says little about how young people are incorporating IT into their everyday lives. Ignoring nuanced measures of use, it is difficult to determine whether digital media are leveling the playing field for youth or whether they are raising new barriers for some while advantaging the societal positions of others. While many have suggested that we must move past the binary classification of haves and have-nots when it comes to information technology uses, few have offered a detailed conceptual framework for such an undertaking, one that can then inform empirical studies of usage differences. This chapter considers the various domains in which users of the Internet may possess different levels of know-how. In addition to presenting the conceptual framework, it also draws on unique data about a diverse group of young people.s Internet uses to illustrate existing differences along the lines of the discussed dimensions.

Hurdles to Information Seeking: Spelling and Typographical Mistakes During Users' Online Behavior

Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:00:00 -500

A refined approach to digital inequality requires that in addition to looking at differences in access statistics we also examine differences among Internet users. People encounter numerous hurdles during their online information-seeking behavior. In this paper, I focus on the likelihood of Internet users to make spelling or typographical mistakes during their online activities. Information seeking on the Web often requires users to type text into forms. Users sometimes make mistakes, which can have hindering effects on their browsing efficiency because they may get derailed to irrelevant sources or encounter errors. I draw on data collected from in-person observations with a diverse sample of one hundred Internet users to see what explains users' tendency to make spelling and typographical mistakes and the frequency with which they encounter such errors. I find that education level is a significant predictor one's likelihood to make mistakes suggesting that existing social inequalities translate into differences in online behavior.

Cognitive Ability and Internet Use Among Older Adults

Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:00:00 -500

While previous work has found cognitive ability to be strongly associated with whether older adults use the Internet, we consider whether cognitive ability also differentiates basic aspects of use. Four measures of use are considered: having high-speed access, length of time since initial household adoption, self-reported time using the Internet, and whether any of the respondents. Internet use involves the Web in addition to email. In all cases, we find associations with cognitive ability, although effects are sometimes mediated to nonsignificance by subsequent attainments, especially education. Given how central social support is to discussions of older adults navigating the Internet, we look also at reports of the availability of such support, and we find that cognition is positively related to respondents having someone available to help them with Internet problems. Taken together, our results suggest strongly that the already cognitively advantaged are much better positioned to reap the potential benefits of online tools to help older adults navigate social benefits and make complicated decisions.

The Disability Divide in Internet Access and Use

Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:00:00 -500

The increasing spread of the Internet holds much potential for enhancing opportunities for people with disabilities. However, scarce evidence exists to suggest that people with disabilities are, in fact, participating in these new developments. Will the spread of information technologies (IT) increase equality by offering opportunities for people with disabilities? Or will a growing reliance on IT lead to more inequality by leaving behind certain portions of the population including people with disabilities? In this paper, we draw on nationally representative data about Americans' Internet uses to (1) identify the extent to which people with disabilities are embracing use of the Internet; (2) how their use of the Internet compares to the Internet uses of the rest of the population; (3) how having a disability relates to and interacts with other social statuses (e.g. socio-economic status, age, gender) with regard to Internet use; and (4) what explains these trends. We draw on representative data collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census of the United States to answer these questions. We find that people with disabilities are less likely to live in households with computers, are less likely to use computers and are less likely to be online. However, once we control for socio-economic background, we find that people with hearing disabilities and those who have limited walking ability are not less likely to be Internet users. Our research enables a deeper understanding of both the use of the Internet by people with disabilities and the spread of new IT more generally.

Differences in Actual and Perceived Online Skills: The Role of Gender

Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:00:00 -500

The literature on gender and technology use finds that women and men differ significantly in their attitudes toward their technological abilities. Concurrently, existing work on science and math abilities of students suggests that such perceived differences do not always translate into actual disparities. There has been little work exploring gender differences with respect to Internet use ability, especially based on a diverse sample of adult users. We use new data on Web-use skill to test empirically whether there are differences in men's and women's abilities to navigate online content. Findings suggest that men and women do not differ greatly in their online abilities. However, we find that women's self-assessed skill is significantly lower than that of men. We discuss the implications of these findings for social inequality with respect to Internet use.

Survey Measures of Web-Oriented Digital Literacy

Sat, 01 Jan 2005 00:00:00 -500

This paper presents survey measures of Web-oriented digital literacy to serve as proxies for observed skill measures, which are much more expensive and difficult to collect for large samples. Findings are based on a study that examined users' digital literacy through both observations and survey questions making it possible to check the validity of survey proxy measures. These analyses yield a set of recommendations for what measures work well as survey proxies of people's observed Web-use skills. Some of these survey measures were administered on the General Social Survey 2000 and 2002 Internet modules making the findings relevant for the use of existing large-scale national data sets. Results suggest that some composite variables of survey knowledge items are better predictors of people's actual digital literacy based on performance tests than measures of users' self-perceived abilities, a proxy traditionally used in the literature on the topic.

Social Framework for Information Seeking

Sat, 01 Jan 2005 00:00:00 -500

In this chapter we focus on new directions in the development of a social framework for understanding the information behavior of well-targeted groups in society. That is, we explore how one's social positioning influences one's information behavior which, in turn, influences the information-seeking behavior of the populations studied. We concentrate especially on human information behavior (HIB) through information technologies, but base our discussion in a more general framework of HIB encompassing other sources. We integrate work from information science, sociology and other disciplines to argue for a more holistic approach to the study of HIB. We outline both conceptual and methodological challenges facing the field of HIB and, for each, suggest specific directions for future research.

Do You "Google"? Understanding Search Engine Use Beyond The Hype