Gender and Digital Communication

Patterns in gender

men and women use digital forms of communication very differently
the digital world is perceived to be overwhelmingly masculine, and women use social media much more than men
thus, gender roles and identities are often reinforced and reproduced through digital forms of communication

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women are more likely to engage with social media while men contribute more to the work-based networking sites

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younger women spend the least amount of time using social media to find information (16%)
in each month in 2014, 40 million more women visited Twitter than men and among the top 50 brands followers on Instagram, 53% were women. Google+ was 64% male user based and 25% of men watched a video daily on YouTube
younger women are much more likely to use digital forms of communication to maintain social relationships: 42% of women use social media to stay in touch, compared with 34% of women age 18-34
younger users (particularly men) use social media for a wider variety of reasons other than maintaining relationships, particularly entertainment (28%)
women have an average number of 394 posts on Facebook and 69% of Facebook gamers are women, again outnumbering men

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investigate differences in use of computers by gender and cross-culture context (Chinese and British)
sample of 220 Chinese and 245 British
self-report survey questionnaire
men in both countries are more likely to use email or chat-rooms
men played more computer games than women
men in both countries are more confident with computer skills
gender differences are higher in Britain than China

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