Producing political content for web 2.0: Empowering citizens and vulnerable populations

Abstract

Social media, or web 2.0, allows citizens to produce content and information. However, not everybody has the same access to these benefits. This causes the emergence of a digital divide and the appearance of vulnerable sectors. We study the effect of education, financial income, and the frequency of technology use on the capacity of citizens to produce political content on social media in Spain. The methodology is based on a secondary analysis of data, whereby a statistical method was applied to a quantitative questionnaire (n=2,444). The results reveal that citizens' creation of political content depends more on education level and frequency of digital network use, rather than on income levels. This data provides a significant and novel contribution to the awareness of factors that determine digital inequality.