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Abstract
Knowledge Gaps in the Internet Age
The foundation of a democracy rests on public support and a reasonably broad
distribution of knowledge. The mass media traditionally have been assigned with providing much
of that knowledge through their surveillance and watchdog functions. However, media do not
inform all citizens equally, and mass communication scholars have long studied the threat
represented by the knowledge gap phenomenon first identified by Tichenor, Olien and Donohue
(1970) and confirmed in more recent analyses (Gaziano, 1997; Viswanath & Finnegan, 1996).
That gap is premised on differential print media use by low and high status groups, but the most
recent arrival to the media environment--the Internet—leads us to re-examine the relationship
between media use and acquisition of public affairs knowledge. Three types of knowledge—
about international affairs, about the local community, and about the Internet—are examined in
relation to media use, including the Internet, in a telephone survey conducted in a Midwest
metropolitan area. Results confirm gaps in all three types of knowledge by high/medium/low
education and income groups. Similarly, differences in international public affairs knowledge
are found for levels of newspaper readership and “tenure” on the Internet. A community
knowledge gap is found for newspaper readership but not time on the Internet, while an Internet
knowledge gap is found for years on the Internet but not for newspaper readership. Examining
the full range of information, we find positive relationships between several media use variables
and the overall media use index and the individual and summary knowledge measures.
Convention