definition of knowledge gap hypothesis

Knowledge Gap Theory – The 5 Key Elements

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Knowledge gap theory is a mass communication theory that states that wealthier and more educated people acquire information from mass media faster than lower socioeconomic classes.

Wealthy people have greater access to media information and benefit more from it. Therefore, as mass media grows, so too does the gap in knowledge between the higher and lower social classes.

The theory is also known as the knowledge gap hypothesis .

Overview of the Theory

The knowledge gap theory argues:

Knowledge is distributed unevenly throughout society.
Information is more accessible to wealthier and more educated people than poorer people. This causes a ‘knowledge gap’.
More educated people tend to be more interested in and open minded about learning, further widening the gap.
As mass media grew in the 20th Century, so too did the gap in knowledge between rich and poor.

Origins of the Theory

The theory was first proposed in 1970 by three scholars:

Phillip Tichenor (Associate Professor of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Minnesota)
George Donohue (Professor of Sociology, University of Minnesota)
Clarice Olien (Instructor in Sociology, University of Minnesota)

The authors explained the theory in their 1970 journal article Mass media flow and differential growth in knowledge :

“as the infusion of mass media information into a social system increases, segments of the population with higher socioeconomic status tend to acquire this information at a faster rate than the lower status segments, so that the gap in knowledge between these segments tends to increase rather than decrease”. (Tichenor, Donohue & Olien, 1970, pp. 159-160)

5 Key Elements of the Knowledge Gap

Tichenor, Donohue and Olien (1970) argue that the gap in knowledge between rich and poor occurs because higher socioeconomic classes have advantages in the following areas:

1. Communication Skills

People from higher socioeconomic classes tend to be better educated in communication skills than people from lower socioeconomic classes.

Better educated people statistically would have better:

Reading and writing skills
Learned thinking skills
Speaking skills
Comprehension skills

They therefore are more capable of understanding the information presented to them in mass media. This highlights the importance of reading and studying throughout your life!

Direct Quote from the Theory

In their own words, Tichenor, Donohue and Olien (1970, p. 161) explain this concept:

“Persons with more formal education would be expected to have the higher reading and com- prehension abilities necessary to acquire public affairs or science knowledge.”

2. Stored Information

Tichenor, Donohue and Olien define stored information as “existing knowledge resulting from prior exposure to the topic” (1970, p. 162).

According to the theory, people who are more highly educated are likely to have had more exposure to a topic in their past. This prior knowledge helps them understand a topic when they are exposed to it by the media.

The authors explain stored information in this way:

“Persons who are already better informed are more likely to be aware of a topic when it appears in the mass media and are better prepared to understand it.” (Tichenor, Donohue and Olien, 1970, p. 162).

3. Relevant Social Contact

People with a higher socioeconomic status tend to have more social contacts. These social contacts are more likely to share information on topics that are also seen on social media. They are therefore more likely to have some prior experience on a topic. This makes them primed to learn and understand the information they have been exposed to.

With more social contacts to provide relevant background information on a topic, people with higher socioeconomic status are also more likely to be able to identify false or inaccurate information on mass media.

High socioeconomic status people have “a greater number of reference groups , and more interpersonal contacts, which increase the likelihood of discussing public affairs topics with others” (Tichenor, Donohue and Olien, 1970, p. 162).

4. Selective Exposure, Acceptance and Retention

The ‘selective exposure’ argument says that people of different educational levels or socioeconomic backgrounds choose to consume media differently.

For example:

People will pay more attention to news that is relevant to their their hobbies and interests .
Higher educated people are presumed to be more politically engaged.
Women tend to gravitate more to soap operas, men toward sports.

Similarly, This selective exposure argument is seen in new media where we appear to be only consuming media from our ‘tribe’. Some people will only watch Fox News, others will only watch MSNBC.

The differences in our media consumption habits will cause gaps in what we know and believe.

Tichenor, Donohue and Olien (1970, p. 162) argue: “A persistent theme in mass media research is the apparent tendency to interpret and recall information in ways congruent with existing beliefs and values.”

5. Media Target Markets

Different media have different target markets.

Pinterest: Predominantly women.
Instagram: Skews toward younger people.
Print news: Skews toward older and higher educated people.
Daytime Television: Skews toward older people.

With such a large amount of different media with their own niche target markets, the gap is only going to be growing in the era of new media.

Tichenor, Donohue and Olien (1970, p. 162) argue: “Print media are geared to the interests and tastes of this higher-status segment”

Evidence of the Gap

Tichenor, Donohue and Olien (1970) use the theory to propose this hypothesis:

At any point in time, higher people of a higher socioeconomic status will be more informed on issues currently in the mass media than people of a lower socioeconomic status.

To test this hypothesis, they presented a study of the amount of people in the 1950s and 1960s who believed humans will reach the moon.

The study appeared to confirm the hypothesis that higher socioeconomic status people (identified by level of education) are more informed than lower socioeconomic status people on issues in the mass media.

Ways to Reduce the Knowledge Gap

In 1975, Donohue, Tichenor, and Olien tried to find ways to minimize the knowledge gap.

They studied the knowledge of people in communities around Minessota between 1969 and 1975.

From their research, they presented 3 hypotheses on how to reduce the gap:

Community Impact: Issues that are relevant to the local community and the everyday lives of normal people tend to arouse interest regardless of education levels.
Level of Conflict: Issues that are ‘hot button issues’ tend to engage more interest of all people regardless of education levels, which may reduce the gap. This only works until the conflict ‘boils over’, after which people turn off out of disgust.
Community homogeneity: A homogenous community is one where most people in the community are similar to one another (in terms of race, social class and culture). Homogenous communities tended to have less of an information gap than heterogenous communities.

Effects of Web 2.0 New Media on the Theory

The big question about this theory is whether it still works in an era of Web 2.0 technology.

The internet has allowed us to communicate en masse in new ways:

Anyone can publish information available to anyone else with an internet connection.
Information online is written in easy-to-read language compared to books and journals.
People can navigate the web through hyperlinks to find information fast.
Users can interact with each other online.

With these new features, different types of hypotheses can emerge:

The knowledge gap widens, because some people have access to the internet while others don’t (‘the digital divide’).
The gap in knowledge closes, because access to information and ability to participate in public discussion is easier than ever.
Less educated people can educate themselves online for free, leading to a closing of the gap.
The gap continues to remain open because the 5 ‘causes’ of the gap (above) still exist regardless of the internet.

More research is required on this question!

Related: Examples of New Media

Strengths and Weaknesses of Knowledge Gap Theory

Pros (strengths).

The theory explains recent political polarization: As more forms of mass media emerge and people can pick and choose their media, the gap is only going to grow.
The theory explains the limitations of mass media: The theory provides an apparent explanation for why information cannot be spread to all corners of a society through mass media alone . Different people consume different media! As Tichenor, Donohue and Olien argue, the theory provides “a fundamental explanation for the apparent failure of mass publicity to inform the public at large.” (170, p. 161)
The theory explains fake news: The theory can explain a supposed link between lower-educated people and belief in fake news. Without access to ‘relevant social contacts’ or ‘stored information’, these people are less capable of identifying and critiquing fake news.

Cons (Weaknesses)

The theory conflates socioeconomic status and education levels: These terms are used interchangeably by the theory’s founders. The terms correlate, but are not the same thing – so this conflation is problematic.
It may not be relevant today: A 50 year old theory of media may fail to understand the complexity of the media landscape today. The original article outlining this theory talks about newspapers as the ‘dominant’ media form!
New media behaves differently: Similarly, new media has less ‘gatekeepers’ than old media. Anyone can start a website and start sharing their information with the world! This theory doesn’t account for the way new media works.

Competing Theories

There are three competing theories that disagree with the arguments of Tichenor and colleagues.

Media Malaise hypothesis: Mass media has a general negative effect on the knowledge and wellbeing of all of society, including the wealthy and poor. It is geared toward sensationalism, conflict and stretching of the truth.
Virtuous Circle hypothesis: Mass media is good for everyone. It educates the poor and creates a generally more educated society on the whole.
Differential Effect hypothesis: Newspapers have a positive effect, while television and new media have a negative effect on society.

Final Thoughts

The knowledge gap theory helps us to start thinking about some of the social reasons we have different beliefs. It also gets us thinking about how mass media is accessed differently by different groups.

However, the theory also has several problematic elements, including the fact that it doesn’t account for new media, and is rather deterministic in claiming poor people are uninformed. Many poorer people would take issue with this! (and, likely, challenge the methods used to study them – see, for example: muted group theory ).

Nonetheless, the theory is a good introduction to the topic and could stimulate a great deal of discussion about the potential effects of mass media on society.

References are in APA style.

Donohue, G. A., Tichenor, P. J., & Olien, C. N. (1975). Mass media and the KG: A hypothesis revisited. Communication Research . 2 (1): 3–23. doi: 10.1177/009365027500200101
Fraile, M. (2011). Widening or reducing the KG? Testing the media effects on political knowledge in Spain (2004-2006). International Journal of Press/Politics, 16 (2): 163–184. doi: 10.1177/1940161210388413
Gaziano, C. (1983). The KG: An analytical review of media effects. Communication Research, 10 (4): 447–486. doi: 10.1177/009365083010004003
Gaziano, C. (1997). Forecast 2000: Widening KGs. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 74 (2): 237–264. doi: 10.1177/107769909707400202
Hwang, Y., & Jeong, S-H. (2009). Revisiting the knowledge gap hypothesis: A meta-analysis of thirty-five years of research. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly , 86 (3): 513–532. doi: 10.1177/107769900908600304
Tichenor, P. A., Donohue, G. A., and Olien, C. N. (1970). Mass media flow and differential growth in knowledge. Public Opinion Quarterly, 34 (2): 159–170.

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Knowledge Gap by Yoori Hwang , Brian Southwell LAST REVIEWED: 29 May 2015 LAST MODIFIED: 29 May 2015 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199756841-0078

The essential notion of the knowledge gap is the proposition that a discrepancy exists in the knowledge that people of varying socioeconomic levels attain when engaging mass media content. In other words, the information-rich get richer when reading newspapers or watching television news reports, whereas those with relatively less background knowledge typically gain information at a comparatively lesser rate. The knowledge-gap hypothesis, explicitly formulated by Tichenor, Donohue, and Olien in 1970, goes beyond suggesting a simple knowledge difference between those with more and less formal education. What the hypothesis suggests is not just that there is a gap in knowledge between groups but also that this gap in knowledge widens as more information enters a society. The knowledge gap hypothesis has stimulated communication research in the United States and elsewhere since 1970. So far, researchers have published more than one hundred studies directly considering the knowledge-gap notion, and scholars have widely cited knowledge gap research in many different disciplines.

The knowledge gap hypothesis first appears formally in Tichenor, et al. 1970 . Studying the effects of newspaper readership in Minnesota communities in the 1960s (see Tichenor, et al. 1980 for detail), Phillip J. Tichenor, George A. Donohue, and Clarice N. Olien—an interdisciplinary research team at the University of Minnesota—found that the slope of information uptake was significantly steeper for those with relatively higher educational attainment, such that the gap between individuals with higher and lower education widened over time, though the relationship between newspaper reading and public affairs knowledge was generally positive for all. Education-based knowledge differences are hardly a new phenomenon. In the United States, for example, variation in policy knowledge across the general population has been a cause for concern for much of the 20th and 21st centuries (and earlier). Lippmann 1922 bemoans the inability of most ordinary people to sufficiently understand detailed policy discussions, for example, and Hyman and Sheatsley 1947 notes the existence of “chronic know-nothings,” people who cannot be reached by information campaigns and, consequently, remain chronically uninformed. The notion that people may hold different levels of knowledge as a function of their group membership also animated scholarly works such as Simmel 1955 . What that long line of scholarship suggests about the consequences of such disparities, though, makes the prospect of widening gaps in knowledge quite consequential. For Hyman and Sheatsley 1947 , the potential existence of chronic know-nothings and knowledge inequalities raises a serious issue for democracy insofar as democracy requires an informed citizenry. Moreover, disparity in knowledge is crucial to understanding inequalities in social control and social power in a variety of forums, such as health and science (e.g., Viswanath, et al. 2006 ), and not just in the political arena. Priest 1995 , for instance, points to the information inequity that citizens in the United States faced in the 1980s and 1990s, given that most rely on news reports for information about environmental and health risks, though only some have the advanced education and training necessary to understand risk reports. The extent to which a particular group has knowledge or information likely also affects the extent to which that group can influence political processes and public policymaking. Thus, scholars have had ample motivation in the past fifty years to not only identify knowledge gaps but also to understand conditions under which such gaps might widen, making Tichenor, et al. 1970 a breakthrough of its time.

Hyman, Herbert H., and Paul B. Sheatsley. 1947. Some reasons why information campaigns fail. Public Opinion Quarterly 11:412–423.

DOI: 10.1086/265867

One of the earliest studies that reported the existence of a knowledge gap. The authors argue that certain segments of the public are difficult to inform and discuss the psychological causes of the problem.

Lippmann, Walter. 1922. Public opinion . New York: Harcourt Brace.

Lippmann’s book is a classic for political communication scholars, sounding an important alarm about the general lack of necessary background information to understand key policy debates amongst most of the electorate in the United States.

Priest, Susanna H. 1995. Information equity, public understanding of science, and the biotechnology debate. Journal of Communication 45:39–54.

DOI: 10.1111/j.1460-2466.1995.tb00713.x

Priest’s concept of information equity between groups highlights a potential ethical consideration for knowledge gap research. Moreover, her emphasis on health and science information underscores the importance of not limiting knowledge gap research to politics and public affairs.

Simmel, Georg. 1955. Conflict and the web of group affiliations . Translated by Kurt H. Wolff and Reinhard Bendix. New York: Free Press.

Tichenor himself noted the importance of Simmel’s pioneering work in stimulating thinking about group-level differences in knowledge and knowledge gain. Originally published in 1922.

Tichenor, Phillip J., George A. Donohue, and Clarice N. Olien. 1970. Mass media flow and differential growth in knowledge. Public Opinion Quarterly 34:159–170.

DOI: 10.1086/267786

The seminal article. This article introduces the original knowledge gap hypothesis and presents empirical supports for the hypothesis using public-opinion-polls data and experiment data.

Tichenor, Phillip J., George A. Donohue, and Clarice N. Olien. 1980. Community conflict and the press . Beverly Hills, CA: SAGE.

Explains the Tichenor-Donohue-Olien team’s general research paradigm and how the knowledge gap hypothesis developed. The book discusses the relationships among social conflict, citizens’ media use, and people’s knowledge, based on data from nineteen different communities in Minnesota. Chapter 7 directly discusses the knowledge gap hypothesis.

Viswanath, Kasisomayajula, Nancy Breen, Helen Meissner, Richard P. Moser, Bradford Hesse, Whitney Randolph Steele, and William Rakowski. 2006. Cancer knowledge and disparities in the information age. Journal of Health Communication 11:1–17.

DOI: 10.1080/10810730600637426

Viswanath and colleagues discuss the consequences of information disparities, noting that such gaps are particularly problematic with regard to health and science topics for which equal holding of knowledge might help equalize overall well-being.

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