Newspaper Complexity and the Knowledge Gap

In: European journal of communication, Band 6, Heft 4, S. 499-522

Abstract

The knowledge gap hypothesis states that segments of the population with higher education acquire knowledge from the mass media at a faster rate than the lower educated segments. This article states that the faster learning rate of highly educated persons, which is claimed by knowledge gap theory, rests upon their greater capacity to process complex, compactly written newspapers. Content analysis data from The Netherlands in combination with data from national election studies in The Netherlands support this hypothesis. For the less educated, watching political news on television proves to be more efficient for acquiring political knowledge than reading political news in a newspaper. Conversely, for higher educated persons reading political news is more efficient, provided they opt for a compactly written newspaper with complex news.