ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the results of a longitudinal study based on data from three surveys that reflect developments in the practices and demographics of “configurable culture” in the United States over a period during which Internet usage changed radically, and the rise of social media as a dominant platform for socializing and information sharing. Configurable activities that are marginally differentiated from traditional modalities of consumption—which we have termed “consumption-adjacent” in previous research—are consistently the most widely adopted and fall into the “mainstream” category for 2017 among all four demographic segments. Sharing songs, an activity in the “transitional” category, has fallen in prevalence among three of the subgroups, while remaining at a consistent level from 2014 to 2017 among younger men. Our work discusses Internet practices that have been neglected in the digital literacy and digital inequality literatures, while also building on their concerns prevailing online social inequalities.
