Exploring structured inequality in Internet use behavior

This paper explicates the construct of ‘communicative potentials’ for understanding inequality in Internet use. Communicative potentials consist of three sets of factors (resources, utility values, and literacy) that jointly affect individuals' Internet use behavior. They are distributed unequally in a society and form a structural grid to transfuse structural patterns of resource and opportunity distributions into patterns of Internet use behavior. Analyzing data of the Shanghai Survey, this study discerns the operation of such structures in the manifestation of socio-economic, age, and gender gaps in likelihood and frequency of usage, as well as types of online activities. Based on the findings, this paper argues that systemic inferences about how the Internet might lead to social changes must be built upon a better understanding of how social structural factors configure features of Internet use behavior in a general population.