1. KNOWLEDGE GAP THEORY

2. The Knowledge Gap Hypothesis was first proposed in 1970 by Tichenor,
Donohue and OLien. Mostly, it is known as Tichenorl or Tichenor and his
colleagues’ hypothesis.
This theory is concerned mainly with “information” and “knowledge” and
emphasizes that knowledge is not distributed equally throughout society.

3. Content
 Mass Media’s Role
 Knowledge Gap Theory

4. Mass Media’s Role:-
 One of the great promises of mass communication is
that it provides people with information they need.
 It has the potential of reaching people who have not
been reached by other means (poor and undeveloped
people).
 Example:- Sesame Street (which combined information
with entertainment for preschool Children.).

5. Knowledge gap Hypothesis:-
 “As the infusion of mass media information into a
social system increases, segments of the population
with higher socio-economic status tend to acquire this
information at a faster rate than the lower status
segments, so that the gap in knowledge between these
two segments tend to increase rather than decrease”.

6. The hypothesis predicts that:
 People of both high and low socioeconomic statuses
will gain in knowledge because of the additional
information, but that persons of higher socioeconomic
status will gain more.
 This would mean that the relative gap in knowledge
between the well-to-do and less well-off would
increase.

7. Operational forms of the
Hypothesis:
 As seen in the following hierarchy, where the knowledge gap exists
is between "Information" and "Knowledge".
 1) OVER TIME, acquisition of knowledge of a heavily publicized
topics will proceed at a faster rate among better educated person
than among those with less education
2) AT A GIVEN POINT there should be a higher correlation
between acquisition of knowledge and education for topics highly
publicized in the media than for topics less highly publicized

8. Possible reasons for Knowledge
Gap:
 Communication skills
 Stored information
 Relevant social contact
 Selective exposure
 Media target markets

9. Knowledge gaps are not
intractable.
Contributory conditions that could reduce
knowledge gaps: -
 content domains,
 channel influence,
 social conflict and community mobilization,
 the structure of communities,
 individual motivational factors.

10. Criticism
 Dervin (1980) criticized the KG for being based on the traditional
source-sending-messages –to-receiver paradigm of
communication. She recommended that communication campaigns
and researchers be more user-based and user-constructed
information.
 Evatt (1998) argued that researchers should be sure that the
information they are testing is useful and relevant for the audience
being tested. (Factual versus conceptual knowledge)