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Knowledge gap hypothesis
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.
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.
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Knowledge gap hypothesis
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.
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.