Abstract

In the Web 2.0 era, a variety of social media have begun to penetrate Chinese digital immigrants’ lives, and user-generated content (UGC) is now a popular mode for creating and generating online information resources. According to China Internet Network Information Centre (CNNIC) reports, many digital immigrants actively participate in blogging, video sharing, online rating, social tagging, and micro blogging, etc. However, some may be more skilled in producing and generating online contents and have higher generative capabilities while others still meet some barriers in doing so. Thus, it is interesting to investigate the online generative capability of Chinese digital immigrants in Web 2.0 context. In this research-in-progress article, we present an exploratory study on online generative capability of Chinese digital immigrants in Shanghai local communities by a semi-structured interview. The aim of this paper is to propose an integrated conceptual framework of online generative capability and identify the related issues about the UGC adoption and generating behaviour by the Chinese digital immigrants, who constitutes a large group of Internet users and has a significant growth tendency. The potential findings may yield some suggestions and practical implications for the designer, manager, and information service staff from different perspectives to facilitate the Chinese digital immigrant’s online generative capability, and further narrow the digital divide and alleviate the information inequality in China.

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