@article{f938a66ad6754345af940535b278fa80,
title = "Online protest participation and the digital divide: Modeling the effect of the digital divide on online petition-signing",
abstract = "Scholars have long been concerned about the effect that digital inequalities might have on marginalized populations. Concern for the “digital divide” extends to social movement scholars, who worry that the digital divide will lead to social movements privileging the concerns of the middle class over those of disadvantaged groups. We argue for a novel way of testing for such effects—the use of a Heckman regression model to model participation in online activism. The Heckman model separately models selection effects (i.e. first-level digital divides that affect Internet access) and main effects (i.e. second-level digital divides and classic predictors of micro-mobilization). We find that the digital divide in access does not exert a selection effect and that the digital divide in usage exerts minimal effects in models predicting online petition-signing.",
keywords = "Digital divide, Heckman selection, micro-mobilization, online activism",
author = "Thomas Elliott and Jennifer Earl",
note = "Funding Information: Jennifer Earl is a professor of Sociology and Government and Public Policy (by courtesy) at the University of Arizona. She is director emeritus of the Center for Information Technology and Society and director emeritus of the Technology and Society PhD Emphasis, both at University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research focuses on social movements, information technologies, and the sociology of law, with research emphases on Internet activism, social movement repression, and legal change. She is the recipient of a National Science Foundation CAREER Award for research from 2006-2011 on Web activism. She is also a member of the MacArthur Research Network on Youth and Participatory Politics. She has published widely, including an MIT Press book, co-authored with Katrina Kimport, entitled Digitally Enabled Social Change, which examines how the use of Internet affordances are reshaping the basic dynamics of protest online. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2016, {\textcopyright} The Author(s) 2016.",
year = "2018",
month = feb,
day = "1",
doi = "10.1177/1461444816669159",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "20",
pages = "698--719",
journal = "New Media and Society",
issn = "1461-4448",
publisher = "SAGE Publications Ltd",
number = "2",
}