媒介素养的代际路径依赖: 结构—实践—认知的多机制解释框架

Description

Abstract (English)

In highly platformized digital media environments, media literacy is widely regarded as a core competence for civic participation. However, substantial and persistent intergenerational differences can be observed in media interpretation, evaluative logic, and risk perception, which cannot be readily reduced through education or technological diffusion. Existing scholarship has largely framed these disparities as remediable “skill gaps,” yet such an approach fails to account for their long-term stability.

Drawing on a path dependence perspective, this study develops a multi-mechanism analytical framework integrating structural conditions, social practices, and cognitive processes to reconceptualize the generational formation of media literacy. It argues that media literacy should not be understood as a neutral and accumulative individual capability, but rather as a socially embedded outcome shaped through the interaction of technological structures, everyday media practices, and cognitive lock-in mechanisms. Specifically, technological and institutional structures configure differentiated entry points into media environments; routine practices sediment these conditions into durable digital habitus; and cognitive mechanisms—such as preference stabilization and default effects—further reinforce existing pathways.

The coupling of these mechanisms produces a self-reinforcing process of generational path dependence. By foregrounding this perspective, the study offers a theoretically integrated account of the persistence of media literacy disparities and provides new insights into digital inequality and generational fragmentation in the public sphere. It also carries implications for platform governance and media education policies aimed at enhancing intergenerational equity.