The New Frontier of Digital Inequality. The Participatory Divide

Abstract

This article focuses on the relationship between digital participation and
the digital participation divide. The first concept refers to the use of the
Internet to produce cultural goods that are subsequently shared on a
global scale; the latter, refers to the inequalities generated by the uneven
distribution of these creative uses of the Internet in a given population.
Empirically, our work focuses on the role of digital skills and sociopolitical
attitudes toward the Internet in explaining the digital participation divide,
as they are considered precursors of digital participation. Results suggest
that the same mechanisms that previously sustained digital divide are now
fostering digital participation divide; however, we argue that the negative
social consequences of this divide exceed those of its predecessor.