What We Do and Don’t Know: A Meta-Analysis about the Knowledge Gap Hypothesis

• In Event: ICA Interactive Paper/Poster Session I
  In Interactive Poster Session: Mass Communication Interactive Poster Session

Abstract

This article provides an overview of the published knowledge gap literature from 2000 until 2017. For this purpose, a content analysis and subsequently a meta-analysis were applied. I find the basic assumption of a positive education-knowledge relationship to be clearly supported. The size of the relationship depends on the topic, the knowledge measure, the study design, the sampling method, the education measure and the method of data collection, but appears unaffected by the setting, the country of data collection, the data type, and publication bias. The central assumption of the original knowledge gap hypothesis, that an increase of mass media information within a social system fosters knowledge divides between those with lower and higher formal education, is overall not strongly supported by the findings of the here examined literature. Thus, doubts about the validity of the knowledge gap hypothesis were not dispelled, but rather nourished.

Author

• Fabienne Lind, University of Vienna