The Knowledge Gap Hypothesis
This hypothesis and theory is defined, by its three creators “as the infusion of mass media information into a social system increases higher socioeconomic status segments tend to acquire this information faster than lower socioeconomic status population segments. Hence the gap in knowledge between the two tends to increase rather than decrease.”
The knowledge gap hypothesis is a theory that proposes that knowledge and information are not equally distributed amongst populations. This theory or hypothesis assumes that increasing the flow of information into a social system is much more likely to benefit certain groups of that population. For example, groups of higher education or higher socioeconomic class. The knowledge gap hypothesis also leads into the digital divide. This theory suggests that the people of higher education and higher social class have much more access to knowledge due to the increasing amount of continual information.
Put more simply, as the increased access to mass media increases those certain segments of population inevitable gain information much faster, which is why the wide gap increases when compared with lower economic status of the population. With the current state of mass media and the continual rise of technology this gap continues to increase. The less fortunate continue to be affected more and more due to this gap. As a result, the knowledge gap also widens, and the people of the higher economic class and education gain the benefits even more. The information services need to be made much more equal towards all of society, otherwise, this gap will continue to increase in the coming years.
In this theory knowledge is treated just like many other commodities that are not distributed equally throughout society. This theory or hypothesis is very important because it shows the huge gap of knowledge between higher socioeconomic citizens versus lower class citizens. The people who are at the top continue to benefit from this gap while the people at the lower end continue to miss out and lose out on valuable information. Especially in a time like today, this gap is more important than ever. With how much people rely on mass media and technology during this pandemic people on the lower end of this knowledge gap are losing out even more. With that being said the gap in our society has continuously gotten bigger and bigger due too many various inequities.
There are many reasons and ideas as to why this gap exists. Some of these would be communication skills, stored information, relevant social contact, selective exposure, and media target markets. These factors all have to do with things that people of higher education and social class would have access too very easily, whereas people who are on the other side of the gap do not have easy access to these factors. There are also ways to reduce this gap. These variables would be impact of local issues, level of social conflict surrounding the issue, and homogeneity of the community.
There are many conditions that may be able to effect knowledge gaps. Some of these examples would be nature of topic (politics, health), channel influence (media exposure), individual-level variables (salience, concern), and macro-level variables (social conflict, community). The reasons these examples exist is because people above and below the gap would have very different ideas and reasonings towards the topics. One of the main concerns with the knowledge gap hypothesis is that large scale campaigns will only make the gap worse. This is because media has different effects and impacts on audiences based on classes. The knowledge gap is something that society has been battling for quite some time. There are many ways to combat this inequality and distribution of information as a commodity. Hopefully, the gap will soon start to shrink or totally close instead of continue to get bigger. Leading to a much more equally distributed information society.
