Men More Likely to Share Creative Work Online Than Women
A recent study from Northwestern University found that while men and women design creative content at about equal rates, 2/3 of men report sharing their work online compared to only 1/2 of the women. When the sample of 1,060 freshmen from the University of Illinois, Chicago, was controlled for self-reported digital literacy, the numbers evened out. The content discussed tends towards the easy to post written fiction, music, and video, but I wonder whether the divide is heightened with user-generated content in virtual worlds, which often requires more complicated 3D modeling or design skills.
“This suggests that the Internet is not an equal playing field for men and women since those with more online abilities -- whether perceived or actual -- are more likely to contribute online content,” Eszter Hargittai, assistant professor of communication studies at Northwestern University, said in a statement.
The study, “The Participation Divide: Content Creation and Sharing in the Digital Age,” recently appeared in the journal Information, Communication and Society. It can be purchased here.
For a quick look at the numbers, on average two out of three men and two out of three women engage in creative writing, art photography, music or film/video, though not necessarily on the Web. However, men were over twice as likely to share their created or remixed music and "considerably more likely" to post their video.
Overall, though, of the 61% who reported some sort of creative activity, 56% said they posted some of the work online.
That to me points to solid ground for virtual worlds the encourage user-created content as the basis of the community, like Second Life or IMVU, which boasts a catalog of 1.7 million virtual items, almost entirely created by users.
There's a strong desire to share content online, though the easiest forms, writing and video, are the most popular, with just over 50% and just under 50%, respectively, of the creative group reporting that they posted that type of work online.
Many virtual worlds recognize that ease of contribution is essential to promoting user-created content. SceneCaster Founder and SVP Mark Zohar, for example, is fond of saying that his company's goal is to do for 3D what YouTube did for video.
I'd love to hear the virtual world community's take on this, from both a developer and user perspective: Does the gender divide for content sharing carry over to virtual worlds and virtual goods? How crucial is that for worlds creating community around user-generated content?
“So while creative output, on the aggregate, is equally distributed among men and women, the sharing of such content is not,” concluded Hargittai.
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