Mediating digital participation
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Research on the ways that digital tools mediate broader social inequality has traditionally focused on the "digital divide". As social and technological realities shifted over the last two decades, scholars interested in digitally mediated inequality have also shifted to focus on "participation divides". This concept offers a way of understanding how people from different groups are or are not benefitting equally from new information and communication technologies. Participation divides is currently a broad and multiform concept that seeks to understand how people use technology to their benefit, and how technology can be better used for social equity. In this dissertation, I employed study participant accounts to generate a concept of digital participation in communities that connect online. I then used that concept to study participation divides and identify factors related to these divides. I conducted a two-part, mixed-methods study involving responses from 272 college students of varying ages, races, majors, and income levels. Using study participant interviews, I identified 11 forms of community participation that interviewees engaged in online. These forms of participation generally focused on consuming and creating content. Content consumption was viewed as a less engaged approach to participation, and content creation was viewed as a more engaged form of participation. Based on their online activities, study participants occupied positions along a spectrum of depth of engagement in relation to online sites for community participation. Using survey responses, I found that most study participants engaged in moderate levels participation in community practices online. Those whose behavior reflected a deeper level of engagement were seen as more full community participants, even though their behavior was not reflective of the norm. Deeply engaged participants created content more often, and tended to use the Internet in a more robust manner for life goals. There were gender and income differences among the population of deeply engaged participants: women were more likely to be deeply engaged than men, and low-income students were more likely to be deeply engaged than middle-income and high-income students. This represented a divide of sorts, but was a reversal of the classical approach to digital divides. "Feelings of similarity in terms of web use" was a psychological variable that significantly predicted deep engagement. This study contributes to existing research by suggesting that participation be measured through multifaceted profiles with meaning derived from study participant experiences. It further adds nuance to existing accounts of digitally mediated participation by tying together specific forms of participation, goals of participation, and relevant psychological, social, and contextual factors.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2015 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Stringer, Daniel Phillip |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Graduate School of Education. |
| Primary advisor | Barron, Brigid |
| Thesis advisor | Barron, Brigid |
| Thesis advisor | Brown, Bryan Anthony |
| Thesis advisor | Goldman, Shelley V |
| Advisor | Brown, Bryan Anthony |
| Advisor | Goldman, Shelley V |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Daniel Phillip Stringer. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Graduate School of Education. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2015. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2015 by Daniel Stringer
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