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Informing Citizens: How People With Different Levels of Education Process Television, Newspapers, and Web News
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Informing citizens
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Informing citizens:
How people with different levels of education process television, newspapers, and web news
Abstract
After more than 100 survey studies, the knowledge gap hypothesis has entered a phase of
experimental investigation. Researchers are testing the possibility that information processing
dimensions might be helpful in explaining why the education level of audiences is associated
with variance in knowledge acquisition from media. The experiment reported here contributes to
this endeavor by testing the interaction of media channels (television, newspaper, web) and time
delay with the education level of audience members, using three memory measures. Results
show that the lower education group encoded, stored, and retrieved news information presented
in the television format best while they have considerably less capacity to remember information
from newspaper and web versions of stories. The higher education group showed the opposite
pattern in that they perform better in memory tests with newspaper and web versions of stories
compared to television. With time delay these patterns hold up. They were also robust when
controlling for subject evaluations of the news stories in terms of interest, informativeness, and
understandability.
KEY WORDS: Knowledge gap, information processing, education level, memory decay,
motivation, limited capacity, encoding, storage, retrieval, news, media channels, television,
newspaper, web.
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| | Authors: Grabe, Maria., Kamhawi, Rasha. and Yegiyan, Narine. |
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Informing citizens
1
Informing citizens:
How people with different levels of education process television, newspapers, and web news
Abstract
After more than 100 survey studies, the knowledge gap hypothesis has entered a phase of
experimental investigation. Researchers are testing the possibility that information processing
dimensions might be helpful in explaining why the education level of audiences is associated
with variance in knowledge acquisition from media. The experiment reported here contributes to
this endeavor by testing the interaction of media channels (television, newspaper, web) and time
delay with the education level of audience members, using three memory measures. Results
show that the lower education group encoded, stored, and retrieved news information presented
in the television format best while they have considerably less capacity to remember information
from newspaper and web versions of stories. The higher education group showed the opposite
pattern in that they perform better in memory tests with newspaper and web versions of stories
compared to television. With time delay these patterns hold up. They were also robust when
controlling for subject evaluations of the news stories in terms of interest, informativeness, and
understandability.
KEY WORDS: Knowledge gap, information processing, education level, memory decay,
motivation, limited capacity, encoding, storage, retrieval, news, media channels, television,
newspaper, web.
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