Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
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.