Explicating Net Diversity in Trend Assessment

Abstract

This study tracks the increasing supply of Internet access and the diversity of Internet use by analyzing data from the three waves of a survey conducted in the United Kingdom in 2005, 2007, and 2009. Data on Internet access and three dimensions of online use (civic-government, economic-commerce, and generic information and news) reveal that the Internet not only offers an emergent promise of diversity but also presents a systematic divide in which the increase in benefits (of Internet capacities and actual consumed) does not uniformly occur, while the impacts of social disparities remain constant over time. Our discussion addresses how characteristics of social backgrounds are salient in harnessing types of Internet use that may be a critical tipping point for information diversity. We argue that policymakers will be better served by understanding the constraint of actual use that is to be in par with the continuous explosion of technological supply.

Markers of Online Privacy Marginalization: Empirical Examination of Socioeconomic Disparities in Social Media Privacy Attitudes, Literacy, and Behavior

“…Thus, for example, she demonstrated that younger and more educated participants are better at retrieving information online (Hargittai, 2002), and younger adults coming from more educated households and those identifying as either Asian American or White, are likelier to have both better access to technology and stronger DLS (Hargittai & Hinnant, 2008). Today, there is a body of work demonstrating a persistent relationship between income, education, race, and age, and inequalities in DLS (e.g., Park, 2018b; van Deursen & van Dijk, 2015; van Dijk, 2005; van Dijk & Hacker, 2003).…”

Social antecedents and consequences of political privacy

“…In summary, the literature on social stratification emphasizes the socialization process in the adoption and the use of new technologies (DiMaggio et al, 2001; Neuman et al, 2011; Park, 2013, 2015a, 2015b; Park and Yang, 2017; Rogers, 2010). A logical extension is that those in socially privileged positions would be more politically socialized and more competent in dealing with new technologies, such as social media networks, and with the costs and benefits involved in revealing one’s political values.…”

OK, Google, Tell Me About Birth Control: Sentiment Analysis of Anti- and Pro-Birth Control Headlines and Snippets

“…education, income, age), as well as social environment, impact how people consume and use Google platforms (Bucy, 2000;Park, 2015;Park, Jang, Lee & Yang, 2018). For example, Park (2015) analyzed data from the three waves of a survey conducted in the U.K. and demonstrated that the social background of users impact their Internet use. Those from underserved communities had lower access to the Internet and were significantly behind others in their use of the Internet for commerce.…”