Notes on “Revisiting the Knowledge Gap Hypothesis: A Meta-analysis of Thirty-five Years of Research”

This paper elaborates on a recent meta-analysis of knowledge gap studies in Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, highlighting the importance of community structure and issue conflict in modifying knowledge differentials, calling for refined conceptualizations of knowledge, and pointing up areas for additional research. It argues that the one independent measure chosen from a study for a knowledge gap meta-analysis should he the relationship between education and knowledge when media publicity is of the greatest magnitude, not an average of the lowest and highest magnitudes. This is because the hypothesis emphasizes the role of increased publicity on the education-knowledge relationship.