Voices of Many or a Few? Predicting Active Engagement with Participatory Web Sites
10 Pages Posted: 7 Feb 2012
Date Written: August 15, 2009
Abstract
Much enthusiasm surrounds the opportunities made available by digital media for people to express themselves and participate in the public sphere without having to go through traditional gatekeepers Indeed, likely more people than ever before participate in discussions and collaborate on projects yielding heretofore unprecedented outcomes of value to many. How is such online participation distributed among a diverse group of users? Are there systematic differences in who is more or less likely to create and share content and to post reviews and vote on other people’s contributions? This paper uses unique data with details about demographic background as well as online engagement to see whose voices are most often showing up in online spaces. Results suggest that socioeconomic status, gender, race and ethnicity are all predictors of contributing to online content. These results hold even among a group of users who have easy access to Internet-connected machines.
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