Knowledge Gap

This entry focuses on the concept of the knowledge gap, which is a specific hypothesis within the area of [Page 410]diffusion of knowledge, and subsequent derivations. A number of models of social change are based on the notion that change is a cumulative process. In such models, small changes result in differential rates of change for the social system—slow system change at first, followed by increasingly faster rates of change during the middle of the change process, followed by slowing rates of societal change at the end. This process is reflected in the familiar "S-curve" which shows an accumulative sum over time. Two prominent models that follow the logic and assumptions of the cumulative process perspective include models of diffusion of technologies and diffusion of knowledge in the social system. Originally proposed by Phil Tichenor and his colleagues in the early 1970s, the knowledge gap hypothesis predicts that as mass-mediated information enters a social system, certain segments of the population (such as those with higher socioeconomic status [SES]) acquire the information faster than the other population segments (those with lower SES). This process results in an increase rather than a decrease in the gap in knowledge between these two segments over time.

It is important to emphasize that the knowledge gap hypothesis is not about whether or not there is a gap between high and low SES segments of the population. Rather, the hypothesis concerns the widening of the gap over time. Actual tests of the knowledge gap hypothesis require data over time and are not prevalent in the scholarly literature. Studies of differences in knowledge levels for various segments of the population at one particular point in time might be better thought of as studies of knowledge differences or deficits (although they typically describe themselves as "knowledge gap" studies). The original knowledge gap study described the gap itself and took it as a given. The knowledge gap hypothesis is offered as an explanation as to how the gap might grow to the size it sometimes becomes when the same amount of information is available through media that penetrate most of society.

The original article by Tichenor and colleagues pointed out what researchers had known for years: that certain people expose themselves to certain kinds of information more, pay more attention, and retain more of it than do others. As a result, those who want to acquire more information will do so more quickly than those who do not. Some researchers have suggested that interest in the given topic under consideration is actually the important factor that determines the rate of information acquisition; others suggest that the important factor is motivation. Whatever the explanation for the phenomenon, empirical evidence is voluminous and can be found throughout social science research literature under such topics as "selective attention," "selective avoidance," "selective retention," and more general studies of learning from the media.

The primary contribution of the knowledge gap hypothesis is that, by describing the process as one that occurs over time, and by focusing on more macro concerns, attention was turned to the implications of this phenomenon for the social system rather than for individuals.

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