Wang, Yinhan; 2011, ‘Media Literacy Dossier: research review 4

(Hargittai and Walejko 2008), LSE Media Policy Project, April 12.

Full reference details of reviewed article:

Hargittai, E., & Walejko, G. (2008). The participation divide: Content creation and
sharing in the digital age. Information, Communication & Society, 11(2), 239-256.

Conceptions/definition of media literacy (or related concept) used

Terms like digital literacy and new media literacy are not explicitly defined in
the article, but it engages with concepts such as digital inequality and
‘participation gap’, and seeks to drive the attention from the digital divide –
differences in access to ICTs – to the ‘participation divide’ – differential use,
literacy and experiences that might contribute to different level of engagement
with participatory, creative pursuits online.

Research method/scope of empirical work

To explore the practices of online content creation and sharing, the authors
ran a paper-and-pencil survey to 1060 first-year students from University of
Illinois, Chicago. The survey collected data about demographic information,
internet use experiences, whether they create any types of content either
online or offline (such as music, poetry or fiction, artistic photography, and film
or video), and whether they post online any of their own creations or remix
from other’s work.

Key findings
- 3 in 5 students report engaging in at least one of the creative activites
online. Music is the most popular pursuit (34.2%), then artistic
photography (27.6%), poetry/fiction (25.9%), and finally film/video
(22.6%).
- Logistic regression shows that parental education level mediates
students’ creative activities; students whose parents have higher
education attainment are more likely to engage in creative content
creation.
- 2 in 5 students report sharing any type of content online. Among those
who post content online, poetry/fiction is the most commonly posted
content (50.9%), then video (49.8%), then posting artistic photos on
social networking sites (35.2%), and finally music (28.7%).
- Although there is significant difference between genders regarding
sharing content online, after controlling for Internet experiences, the
difference no longer exists. In other words, users’ online ability
mediates online content sharing.

Key implications for research and policymaking

Only one intervening factor (user skill) is used to examine the relationship of
online content sharing and gender. More qualitative data and more fine-tuned

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measure of online ability should be developed to explore other intervening
factors in differential Internet uses. Understanding the participation gap may
help to understand social inequality.