The knowledge gap hypothesis is a mass communication theory created by Philip J. Tichenor, George A. Donohue, and Clarice. N Olien in 1970. The theory is based on how a member of society processes information from mass media differently based on education level and socioeconomic status (SES). Since there is already a pre-existing gap in knowledge between groups in a population, mass media amplifies this gap to another level. The Knowledge Gap Hypothesis overviews and covers theoretical concepts that the hypothesis builds upon, historical background, operationalization and the means by which the hypothesis is measured, narrative review, meta-analytic support that draws data from multiple studies, new communication technologies that have affected the hypothesis, as well as the idea of Digital Divide, and the existing critiques and scholarly debates surrounding the hypothesis.
Historical background
The knowledge gap hypothesis has been implicit throughout the mass communication literature. Research published as early as the 1920s had already begun to examine the influence of individual characteristics on people's media content preferences.
1929 William S. Gray and Ruth Munroe authors of The Reading Interests and Habits of Adults examined the education advantages of adults which influenced their reading habits. The well educated reader grasped the subject matter in newspaper articles more quickly and moved on to other types of reading materials that fit their interests. The less educated reader spent more time with the newspaper article because it took that person longer to comprehend the topic.
1940 Paul Lazarsfeld, head of the Office of Radio Research at Columbia University, set out to examine whether (1) the total amount of time that people listened to the radio and (2) the type of content they listened to correlated with their socioeconomic status. Not only did Lazarsfeld's data indicate people of lower socioeconomic status tended to listen to more radio programming, but also they were simultaneously less likely to listen to "serious" radio content.
1950 The authors: Shirley A. Star, a professor in the University of Chicago's sociology department and Helen MacGill Hughes, a sociologist of the University of Chicago worte, "Report on an Educational Campaign: The Cincinnati Plan for the United Nations" discovered that while the campaign was successful in reaching better-educated people, those with less education virtually ignored the campaign. Additionally, after realizing that the highly educated people reached by the campaign also tended to be more interested in the topic, Star and Hughes suggested that knowledge, education, and interest may be interdependent.
1965 Philip Tichenor wrote his doctoral dissertation titled Communication and Knowledge of Science in the Adult Population of the US, which served as a source for some of the information used and analyzed in the later article where the term Knowledge Gap Hypothesis was coined
1970 Philip J. Tichenor, George A. Donohue, and Clarice. N Olien (later known as the Minnesota Team), the authors of the original article Mass Media Flow and Differential Growth in Knowledge, which proposes the hypothesis and applies the idea to social and public life and generally relevant information, and less so to “audience-specific topics such as stock market quotations, society news, sports and lawn and garden care” (Tichenor, Donohue, & Olien, 1970, p. 160)
1983 Gaziano put out a review of 58 studies on SES-based knowledge inequities, which emphasizes how variations in media exposure, knowledge definitions, and population differences contribute to inconsistent findings on knowledge gaps. For example, higher socioeconomic status, SES, people generally have more education, which improves their reading, writing, and comprehension skills.
- Amount of stored information: "Persons who are already better informed are more likely to be aware of a topic when it appears in mass media and are better prepared to understand it."(Tichenor, Donohue, and Olien 1970, pp. 162)
Since the 1970s, many policy makers and social scientists have been concerned with how community members acquire information via mass media. Throughout the years, extensive research has been conducted and taken different approaches to researching the Knowledge Gap Hypothesis. The hypothesis operationalization consists of the following:
- For cross-sectional research, the knowledge gap hypothesis expects that "at any given time, there should be a higher correlation between acquisition of knowledge and education for topics highly publicized in the media than for topics less highly publicized. Gaziano discusses the connection between education and income disparities between the "haves" and "have-nots." Gaziano conducted two narrative reviews, one of 58 articles with relevant data in 1983 and the other of 39 additional studies in 1997. Gaziano writes, "the most consistent result is the presence of knowledge differentials, regardless of topic, methodological, or theoretical variations, study excellence, or other variables and conditions" (1997, p. 240). Evidence from several decades, Gaziano concludes, underscores the enduring character of knowledge gaps and indicates that they transcend topics and research settings.
Gaziano explains the conceptual framework of the knowledge barriers, the critical conceptual issues are the following measurements:
- SES Socioeconomic status: education, income, and occupation
- Knowledge
- Knowledge gap
- Media publicity
Jeffrey Mondak and Mary Anderson (2004) released a statistical analysis of the knowledge gap hypothesis, finding out that while increased media exposure can enhance political knowledge, pre-existing socioeconomic and gender disparities often determine who benefits the most, reinforcing rather than reducing knowledge inequities.
"All analyses point to a common conclusion: approximately 50% of the gender gap is illusory, reflecting response patterns that work to the collective advantage of male respondents."
"Americans with higher household incomes are also more likely to have multiple devices that enable them to go online. Roughly six-in-ten adults living in households earning $100,000 or more a year (63%) report having home broadband services, a smartphone, a desktop or laptop computer and a tablet, compared with 23% of those living in lower-income households."
In 1980, Dervin started questioning the traditional source-receiver model of mass communication, as concentrating on receivers’ failure to get and interpret information is “blaming the victim.”
In 2003, Everett Rogers renamed the Knowledge gap hypothesis to the Communication Effects Gap hypothesis, as the existing gap was attributed to miscommunication and had nothing to do with receivers of information.
Further debates surrounded the Knowledge Gap Hypothesis regarding the definition of the hypothesis in the textbook as it seemed unattractive to people of different SESs. The idea of posing open-ended questions was introduced to let responders answer the questions more profoundly. However, Gaziano states that gaps in knowledge were still found, and according to Hwang and Jeong (2009), they resulted in smaller gaps compared to other methods of analyzing the hypothesis.