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of interactions. For example, Scheufele (2002) examined the interaction between media use and
interpersonal communication (e.g., Scheufele, 2002). In addition, Eveland and Scheufele (2000)
studied how education interacted with TV and newspaper news use to impact such political
variables as candidate, party issue, and ideological knowledge. They found that both TV and, to a
lesser extent, newspapers appeared to be reducing rather than increasing knowledge gaps in the
knowledge measures. Newspaper and TV use did not interact with demographics to influence
self-reported voting, but education and newspaper use did interact to influence political
participation. In this case, there was a gap-opening effect.
After reviewing these and other studies, we wondered about how motivations for media
use during a political season (the uses and gratifications approach) interacted with demographics
(the knowledge gap approach) to influence four important indicators of political activity: voting,
consumption of political coverage from TV and print media, interest in politics, and interpersonal
communication about politics. This, it seemed to us, would allow the integrating of uses and
gratifications and knowledge gap approaches. To provide a rationale for this approach, we look
closely at the literature on motives for using the news media, as well as at the literature on how
demographics affect political activity directly and how they might be expected to interact with
media-use motivations. A model of “motivation gaps” is articulated and used to generate
hypotheses. These hypotheses are then tested with data from a telephone survey of adults in a
midwestern community right before the 2000 national election.
REVIEW OF THE RELEVANT LITERATURE
The Uses and Gratifications Tradition
The uses and gratifications approach is often used to examine why people access certain
mass media outlets. The perspective has several main tenets: 1) the audience is active and goal-
oriented; 2) motivations help explain media exposure and interest; 3) people form intentions and
expectations for media use; and 4) people select a medium to achieve their sought motives
Convention