THE PARTICIPATION DIVIDE: Content creation and sharing in the digital age1

Abstract 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 with earlier times. The authors 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 by gender with men much more likely to engage in it. However, once internet user skill is controlled for, men and women are equally likely to post their materials on the Web. Keywords: Participationskillinequalitydigital dividecreativitycontentsharingpostinggenderinternetwebusersdigital inequalitydigital literacymusicvideoarts Notes 1. The authors are grateful to the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for its support of this project. Hargittai is indebted to the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and The Lenore Annenberg and Wallis Annenberg Fellowship in Communication. The authors thank Sarah Burgard and Jeremy Freese for helpful comments. They are also grateful for feedback received from people at Northwestern University's Culture and Society Workshop, at the annual meetings of the Association of Internet Researchers, at the University of Michigan Communication Studies Colloquium and at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society Luncheon Series. Additionally, they appreciate the support of faculty and staff at the University of Illinois-Chicago for making this study possible, namely, Mary Case, Ann Feldman, Tom Moss and Karen Mossberger. Also, they thank the following people for their assistance with data collection and entry: Waleeta Canon, Soo An, Dan Li, and the group of undergraduate research assistants in the Web Use Project group during the 2006–2007 academic year. 2. The authors of this article are not now nor have ever been affiliated with this university in any way other than in the context of this study. Focus on this campus is not due to convenience; rather, it is the result of careful consideration about what type of student population would be most helpful in addressing questions of interest in the research project. 3. What is depicted in italics here was underlined on the original survey. 4. The survey included a question verifying students' attentiveness to the questionnaire. A small portion of students (3.4 per cent) were identified as not paying attention to question wording, suggesting that they were checking off responses randomly instead of replying to the substance of the question. The responses of these students have been excluded from the data and analyses presented here, so as to minimize error introduced through such respondents. 5. Results are robust when the analyses are performed on the entire sample.