Competency Profiles In Digital Information Judgment And Use Across Countries: Digital Empowerment Or Structural Constraints?

Abstract

Digital capabilities are widely recognized as the key to promoting social participation, enhancing information judgment and realizing individual empowerment. However, the formation of competence is not only influenced by individual factors, but also rooted in the distribution of institutional arrangements, cultural traditions and structural resources. Based on Giddens' structuration theory and the classical information behavior model, this paper combines the research on digital empowerment pathways to construct an analytical framework of “structure-empowerment-competency portrait”, from which this study explores how factors such as gender, age, and geographic location shape the individual's ability in the digital environment. In this framework, we explore how factors such as gender, age, and geography shape the performance of individuals in digital environments.

The study utilizes data from 61 countries released by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and employs descriptive statistics, and regression modeling to identify the significant pathways through which structural disparities influence key dimensions of digital competence, including information judgment, content creation, and collaboration and communication. The results indicate that different social groups face unequal opportunities for empowerment in the development of digital skills, revealing underlying institutional logics and cultural mechanisms that shape these disparities. The findings provide not only a theoretical foundation for the formulation of educational policies and the optimization of technological platforms, but also offer empirical insights for the construction of future cross-national competency assessment frameworks..