Disentangling the role of algorithm awareness and knowledge in digital inequalities : an empirical validation of an explanatory model

Petrovčič, Andraž (author), Reisdorf, Bianca Christin (author), Vehovar, Vasja (author), Bartol, Jošt (author)

Algorithms have become almost ubiquitous on the internet. They shape the way internet users engage with internet services across diverse online domains and what outcomes they obtain from their internet uses. While scholars have extensively studied the societal implications of algorithms in the digital world, only a few studies investigated the relationship between digital inequalities and algorithm awareness and knowledge. Little is known about how ubiquity of internet access and disparities in skills affect algorithm awareness and knowledge of internet users, and how they affect their internet uses and outcomes. To fill this important gap, this study presents and tests an explanatory model to assert how algorithm awareness and knowledge are related to the three levels of digital inequalities. The data were collected with a face-to-face survey (response rate = 54%) on a representative sample of internet users (N = 802) in Slovenia in 2022. Results of path analysis confirmed the sequential paths between the three levels of digital inequalities, suggesting that ubiquity of internet access strongly determines internet skills and internet uses, which in turn affect tangible internet outcomes. While ubiquity of internet access affected only algorithm awareness, internet skills predicted both algorithm awareness and knowledge. Importantly, algorithm knowledge was a significant determinant of internet uses. Age, education, and income moderated some of the relationships in the model. Overall, the study demonstrates that research on digital inequalities and related interventions need to address algorithm awareness and knowledge, and also consider how social inequalities among internet users shape them.

• Language: English
• Keywords: algorithm awareness, algorithm knowledge, digital inequalities, explanatory model, path analysis, survey
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FDV - Faculty of Social Sciences
• Publication status: In print
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2024
• Number of pages: Str. 1-18
• Numbering: Vol. , no.
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-158448
• UDC: 004.021
• ISSN on article: 1369-118X
• DOI: 10.1080/1369118X.2024.2363896
• COBISS.SI-ID: 198415619
• Publication date in RUL: 11.06.2024

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Information, communication & society
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• ISSN: 1369-118X
• COBISS.SI-ID: 18365533

Licences

• License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
• Description: The most restrictive Creative Commons license. This only allows people to download and share the work for no commercial gain and for no other purposes.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: Računalniški algoritmi, uporabniki interneta, družbena neenakost, Slovenija