Beyond structural inequality: a socio-technical approach to the digital divide in the platform environment

This article constructs a conceptual framework using "platform affordance" to understand how human-technology interactions in platform environments extend digital inequality beyond structural factors. It highlights the positive sequential relationship between technology-efficacy and self-efficacy in shaping stratified uses and outcomes on social media. Using Sina Weibo data, the study finds user perceptions of platform features influence online content creation, leading to unequal digital capital distribution. Platform affordance both weakens mechanisms reproducing social inequality and reshapes how social structural factors operate through moderating effects on the technology-efficacy and self-efficacy relationship.

Jianghua Yang, Mengzhu Zhang