Interests in News

and the Knowledge Gap

B.K.L. GENOVA AND BRADLEY S. GREENBERG

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. HE knowledge gap hypothesis proposes that socioeconomic fac-
tors are the crucial determinant in identifying citizens who are more
likely to be knowledgeable about public affairs news events. In their
seminal work on this issue, Tichenor et al. chose education to index
SES in assessing public knowledge about current print-media news
events. Their secondary analysis of several U.S. studies led to this
proposition: "As the infusion of mass media information into a social
system increases, segments of the population with higher socioeco-
nomic status tend to acquire this information at a faster rate than
lower status segments, so that the gap in knowledge between them
tends to increase rather than decrease" (Tichenor et al., 1970:159-
60).
This statement conveys the pessimism that the information-rich will
become richer, and it bears supporting evidence. The same explana-
tion has been applied to the impact of the television series "Sesame
Street." Advantaged children who infrequently watched that series
gained more in cognitive skills than disadvantaged children with the
same viewing pattern (Ball and Bogatz, 1970). News events have been

Abstract Although prior evidence identified socioeconomic status as a key factor in

the consumption of public affairs news information, equivalent evidence suggests that
individual interests in news events are related to media consumption and information
acquisition. Here, the comparative strengths of these two propositions are analyzed in
the context of the "knowledge gap" hypothesis. For two news events, two-wave data
from community samples assessed social interest and self-interest in the news, level of
education, and knowledge about different aspects of the news events. Interest was
more strongly related to knowledge than education, particularly for more complex
information. Further, between the two field waves, more new information was learned
by those with higher levels of interest.
B.K.L. Genova is Assistant Professor in the School of Information Studies, Syracuse
University, New York, and Bradley S. Greenberg is Professor of Communication and
Telecommunication at Michigan State University.

Public Opinion Quarterly © 1979 by The Trustees of Columbia University

Published by Elsevier North-Holland, Inc. 0033-362X/79/OO43-O079/$1.75
80 GENOVA AND GREENBEfiG

demonstrated to diffuse somewhat more rapidly to high SES adults

than to lower SES citizens (Budd et al., 1966).
There is no quarrel with the proposition that certain background
characteristics such as education contribute to the capacities of audi-
ence members to respond to and assimilate incoming media informa-
tion (Wade and Schramm, 1969). Hyman et al. (1975) have written
that the process of education creates an "enduring" receptivity to
knowledge. There is, however, a body of research evidence which
posits that the choice of media information to consume and the

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consequent learning of media information stem more immediately and
directly from motivational interests of the public (Ettema and Kline,
1977). For example, one study of audience attention to television
commercials for two gubernatorial campaigns showed strong ties with
campaign interest and little support for demographic locators, such as
education or occupation (Atkin et al., 1973). Another found interest
strongly related to knowledge about an ongoing sports event
(Greenberg et al., 1965). One domestic and one foreign study sought
to isolate factors playing a role in political knowledge acquisition.
Both concurred on the role played by interest predictors, suggesting
that the process moves from interest through media use to political
knowledge (Johnson, 1973; Bishop and McMartin, 1973). The correla-
tion of political interest with political knowledge was as strong as that
of media use with political knowledge in each study.
These representative studies suggest that the interests of the public
may be a central factor in what public affairs knowledge is gained.
Implicit is the notion that interests may have something to do with
education or socioeconomic status, but nowhere is that issue directly
assessed, nor are the demographic locators separated from interest
predispositions, within the knowledge gap scheme. Although educa-
tion is likely to widen an individual's overall scope of interest, it is not
necessary and perhaps not reasonable to assume that there are
homogenous interests among similarly educated citizens, whether
high or low in education.
This study focuses on interest as a key component in assessing
public affairs news information learning within the framework of the
knowledge gap phenomenon. Here it is proposed that an interest-
based model will permit a more sensitive examination of news infor-
mation gain processes and will help trace the patterns of knowledge
differences among mass media audiences. Figure 1 displays the model
used. News information items are portrayed as having different distri-
butions in their perceived interest for receivers, and information gain
is presented as a function of those interests. Knowledge gains grow
more rapidly among more interested public segments, during early
INTERESTS IN NEWS AND THE KNOWLEDGE GAP II

X
/

ll
/

Prior

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knowledge
level *il )
!

Figure 1. Information Gain Response Functions

and more intermediate stages of dissemination of information about

continuing news events. If any message were publicized indefinitely
or at least for relatively long periods, expectations are that the knowl-
edge gap regarding basic information about the event would eventu-
ally narrow and close. Given media news patterns and the fragility of
news coverage on any given topic, that would rarely occur. The
magnitude of the gap would seem to depend on how long the media
publicity continues.
Interest itself is not an unambiguous concept and has been var-
iously explicated in the literature. Adams et al. (1965) based a distinc-
tion on potential social utility, while Greenberg et al. (1965) found
news interest based more on perceived personal utility for the. infor-
mation. Hanneman and Greenberg (1973) used composite measures
of relevance (importance) and salience (interest) to predict differential
news information processing. McCombs (1972) studied relevance as
both discussion of the event and interest in the event interchangeably.
From these approaches, two components of interest emerge for
specific examination in this study. One is the perceived usefulness of
news information for one's self. Self-interest is pertinent to informa-
tion areas which are scanned because they are judged by the indi-
vidual to have some functional utility in daily coping behaviors (At-
kin, 1973). Self-interests are likely to be determined by personal
exigencies, e.g., "What is happening to me?" They may be of pri-
macy in orienting what a person chooses to learn. An individual with
relatively constant spheres of activity and stable social networks
should persist in using certain criteria to select information areas.
The second component of interest is the perceived utility of the
information to the individual's social milieu, to the kinds of interper-
•2 GENOVA AND GREENBESG

sonal networks important to the individual. In terms of information

seeking, but not information gain, Chaffee and McLeod (1973) have
reported that social contacts account better for that behavior than do
individual differences. Social interests are more likely to be influ-
enced by the agenda-setting role of the mass media's choices of news
events to report. Thus, changes in the individual's spheres of activity
and/or social milieu should result in changing perceptions of informa-
tional utility, and perhaps the formation of new interest areas.
Within this framework, the study model proceeded to test certain

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specific propositions. First, the relative predictive power of interest
versus education in assessing news knowledge gain was examined, as
well as the distinction between self-interest and social interest. Sec-
ond, it was anticipated that citizens with stronger interests would
have more knowledge than those with weaker interests in specific
events, and that the former would acquire additional information
more rapidly as new mass media information was made available to
the social system, thus widening the knowledge gap between them.
Finally, for news events with longer durations of media coverage, the
knowledge gap was expected to begin to narrow between the more
and less interested public segments.

Method
A structured interview was used to measure separate components
of interest and knowledge about two well-publicized news events in
August 1974, from a panel survey of adults at two points in time, 10
days apart.

SAMPLE

The survey site was a mid-Michigan area of 15 communities with an

estimated population of 115,000 excluding an urban center. A sys-
tematic probability sample of 400 telephone numbers was drawn from
the area telephone directory. Respondent selection within each
household among adults eighteen years of age and over followed the
procedure recommended by Troldahl and Carter (1964). In all, 63
percent usable interviews (N = 253) were completed during the first
wave, with 28 percent refusals, disconnects, and no answers, 2
percent ineligible, and 7 percent who said they would not be
reinterviewed. Comparisons between the obtained sample and 1970
census characteristics yielded comparable distributions for sex and
age, with some discrepancy for education and occupation. The sample
was 48 percent male, compared to 46 percent in the census. Both the
sample and the census contained 59 percent aged eighteen to thirty,
and 14 percent in their forties. The sample included 32 percent in
INTERESTS IN NEWS AND THE KNOWLEDGE GAP 83

labor and service jobs, with 36 percent in the census; the sample had
a higher proportion of professionals (31 percent versus 14 percent)
and a lower proportion of students (7 percent versus 23 percent) than
did the census, in large part because the data collection occurred
during the summer, when far fewer students reside in the area.

NEWS EVENTS

The questionnaire assessed respondent interest and knowledge

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about two different news events, the ongoing National Football
League strike and the Nixon impeachment developments, at two
points in time. These two events met several necessary criteria. First,
they met the need for two news topics contrasting in the likely
interest they would hold for different audience segments. Second,
they were likely to have different durations of display in the mass
media, with the football strike a relatively short-lived event and the
impeachment events developing a longer history. Third, both events
had to remain in the news throughout the 10-day study period.

VARIABLES

The key independent variables were self-interest and social interest.

To tap self-interest, respondents were asked four questions about the
event's influence on their own life, their job or that of someone close
to them, the cost of living, and their general satisfaction with things
around them. To tap social interest, respondents were asked if they
had discussed the event with friends, relatives, people at work, or
anyone else. Questionnaire items were evaluated for inclusion on
their posited self- or social interest indices on the basis of results from
a principal axis factor analysis with a quartimax rotation. For exam-
ple, at time one, the four items tapping social interest in the NFL
event had factor loadings ranging from .57 to .88 with no loading on
these items exceeding .15 on the self-interest factor. In parallel, the
items comprising self-interest had factor loadings ranging from .51 to
.81 with no loading exceeding .16 on the social interest factor. The
standard deviation of the constructed interest indices were .89 and
.94. The proportion of variance accounted for by items posited to
establish these two factors of interest were 95 percent and 91 percent.
Factor scores for all the extracted factor items were summed to form
the indices of interest.1 Composite interest was an index obtained by
summing the single index scores of self-interest and social interest.
1
Independent variable indexing entailed the following steps: First, factor analyses
were obtained with a quartimax of each group of component variables, in order to
arrive at a factor score coefficient for each component. Next, factor scores were
created for each respondent on the chosen factor, i.e., multiplying a respondent's
U CENOVA AND GREENBERG

The events examined differed by interest levels, as anticipated.

There was little interest in the NFL strike, either in terms of self-
interest or social interest measures at time one; about 80 percent of
the sample chose low interest responses on both measures. In con-
trast, 60 percent of the sample selected high interest responses for the
impeachment event during the first interview.
The use of a panel design carries with it some potential contamina-
tion problem. Here, the contamination argument would be that the
first wave of questioning could have stimulated interest in the two

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news events. However, between the two waves, more respondents
decreased in interest for each event than increased. For the NFL
event, 78 reported less interest and 4 percent reported more interest;
for the impeachment, 44 percent decreased and 40 percent increased
in interest. If there was any contamination problem, it did not have
the expected outcome.
The dependent variables were measures of factual and structural
knowledge about each news event (Akin and Greenberg, 1974). Fac-
tual knowledge tapped the respondent's knowledge of specific items,
names, dates, places, facts, and figures, related to specific news
occurrences. Factual knowledge items asked for the names of quar-
terbacks crossing picketlines, the amount of presidential pension, etc.
Structural knowledge indexed the respondent's understanding of the
relationships manifested in an event, how or why it took place, and
the event's place in the broader framework of related phenomena.
Structural knowledge items asked about Ed Garvey's role in the NFL
strike, the implications of presidential censure, etc. From a pretest,
three items were selected for each knowledge component, and scored
as correct or not. Two of the six knowledge items remained constant
across both interviews, while four more current questions during
wave two replaced prior items from wave one. A single index for each
knowledge variable was created by summing standardized response
scores across knowledge items at each time period.
Six standard categories assessed the respondents' highest education
level: Less than sixth grade completion, seventh grade through some
high school, high school diploma, some college, college degree, and
graduate work.
After all indices had been constructed and before analyses to test
the study hypotheses, the relationship between interest and education
was examined. If these were strongly interrelated, much of the pro-
posed analysis would be unwarranted. At time one, the composite
standardized score on the component variables by the factor score coefficient for that
variable. The final index score was obtained by summing a respondent's standardized
scores on N component measures, each multiplied by the appropriate factor score
coefficient. Items, distributions, and related information are available from the authors.
INTERESTS W NEWS AND THE KNOWLEDGE GAP M

measure of interest in the NFL strike was correlated .14 with educa-
tion, and interest in the impeachment developments was correlated
.23 with education. At time two, the same measures of interest were
correlated .08 and .18, respectively, with education. The relatively
low magnitude of these correlations permits direct comparisons of the
roles of education and interest in explaining potential knowledge gap
differences.

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Findings
First, the independent and combined impacts of interest and educa-
tion on public affairs knowledge were examined. For both events at
both time periods, the correlation of interest with knowledge ex-
ceeded that of education with knowledge (Table la). At time one, the
differences between the correlations were not significant, but in the
predicted direction; at time two, each difference was significant (p <
.01). The interest-knowledge correlations ranged from .32 to .39, and
the education-knowledge correlations ranged from .23 to .29, de-
monstrating no overlap in the ranges. Further, as anticipated, the
multiple correlations of education and interest, ranging from .40 to
.44, exceeded the individual correlations.
This basic analysis was repeated with the conceptually and opera-
tionally distinct components of factual and structural knowledge, in
Table lb and lc. The interest-knowledge and education-knowledge
relationships have distinctive and contrasting patterns. For factual
knowledge, there are small and inconsistent differences in the correla-
tions between education and interest with knowledge. Twice educa-
tion yields a higher correlation, and twice interest does, but they vary
little. Thus, for discrete bits of information about such news events as
these, education and interest are functionally equivalent as predictors.

Table 1. Public Affairs Knowledge by Interest and Education

la. Composite lb.Factual lc. Structural

Knowledge Knowledge Knowledge
NFL IMP NFL IMP NFL IMP
1\ It 1\ T, l\ 1\ I, l\ 1\ It 1, 1,
Interest .32 .36 .35 .39 .24 .24 .23 .28 .34 .40 .36 .40
Education .29 .23 .29 .26 .32 .18 .26 .21 .19 .24 .24 .24
Multiple
correlation" .40 .41 .41 .44 .38 .29 .31 .33 .37 .45 .39 .44
* The Betas for Interest and Education with Composite Knowledge for Tl (NFL) were
.28 and .25; for T2 (NFL), .34 and .21; for Tl (IMP), .29 and .23; for T2 (IMP), .36 and
.20. All Betas were statistically significant atp < .001.
 M GENOVA AND GREENBEKG

Table lc shows that the learning of structural knowledge is far more

susceptible to interest differences than to education differences. The
range of education-knowledge correlations is .19 to .24, while the
range of interest-knowledge correlations is .34 to .40, all statistically
significant differences (p < .001). Furthermore, the multiple correla-
tions add trivially, from .03 to .05, to the correlations obtained with
the variable of interest alone. For learning information about a news
event which requires an understanding of processual elements, inter-
est is a better predictor than education, and education adds virtually

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nothing to the prediction obtained from interest alone.
It also was anticipated that self-interest would be a better predictor
of knowledge than social interest. The results in Table 2 are surpris-
ing, but clarify Table 1. First, self-interest is not a better predictor of
knowledge, but a worse predictor. In all comparisons, it yields lower
correlations with both factual and structural knowledge than does
social interest in the news events. Further, it yields generally lower
correlations with both knowledge components than does education,
more so for the NFL event than for the impeachment events.
Whereas a tentative conclusion from Table 1 suggested that factual
knowledge was equally predictable from the composite interest index
and education, Table 2 shows that social interest, i.e., talking with
people about the event, consistently is a stronger predictor about both
factual and structural knowledge, for the NFL strike event. Social
interest is also a stronger predictor of both kinds of knowledges for
the impeachment event at time two, and for structural knowledge at
time one. As judged by these respondents, the impact of these events
on their personal well-being was not a determinant of how much they
learned. Their ability to use the news in social situations was.
Further, it was posited that at any point in time, more interested
citizens would have a higher level of knowledge than those less
interested in a news event, i.e., that differing levels of interest would
generate a knowledge gap. Figure 2 examines this proposition for
each event at two points in time. The knowledge differences between
those with high and low interests are significantly different for each
Table 2. Self-interest and Soda! Interest by Factual and Structural Knowledge

Time One Time Two

Interest Interest
Self Social Education Self Social Education
NFL
Factual .06 < .43 > .32 .06 < .31 > .18
Structural .14 < .43 > .19 .16 < .46 > .24
IMP
Factual .13 < .20 < .26 .17 < .30 > .21
Structural .21 < .29 > .24 .29 < .37 > .24
INTERESTS IN NEWS AND THE KNOWLEDGE GAP »7

Table 3a. New Knowledge Gap by Interest in Two Newt Events at Time Two

N Mean I df p
NFL
High interest 76 1.96
7.51 176 <.001
Low interest 102 0.67
IMP
High interest 78 2.32
3.32 154 <.001
Low interest 78 1.63

event at each point in time, for all four possible independent compari-

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sons (r-values range from 3.81 to 7.34, all at/? < .001). Those with
more interest knew more than those with less interest. This estab-
lished the existence of a significant knowledge gap. Given such a gap,
it was possible to investigate the notion that those with a higher level
of interest would acquire new information faster than those less in-
terested, thereby widening the knowledge gap between them.
At time two, a series of four new information questions, two struc-
tural and two factual, was asked for each event. These new informa-
tion items reflected event developments after the first interview. The
analysis in Table 3a included those respondents who retained the
same interest level as they had at time one, which was two-thirds of
each news event group. For each event, those with continuing high
interest in the event learned significantly more of the newly available
information than those who remained disinterested.
Also examined were the data for old knowledge, or the items which
remained constant during both waves. The analysis in Table 3b in-
cludes respondents who retained the same interest level throughout
the study. The means on the repeated information items are presented
for each subgroup. The same general pattern emerges; for both
events, more interested respondents displayed a consistently higher
level of knowledge. A similar finding emerged from subanalyses of the
switchers, regarding interest in the impeachment event. Interest gain-
ers between the two time waves knew significantly more at the sec-
ond testing than interest losers (p < .05). For NFL, the numbers who
switched were too small for analysis.

Table 3b. Old Knowledge Gap by Interest in Two News Events

Time One Time Two

Mean Mean
NFL
High interest .92* 1.14*
Low interest .27 .32
IMP
High interest 1.09 1.68"
Low interest .88 1.40
* High interest-Low interest differences are significant a t p < 0 1 .
88 CENOVA AND CREENBEBG

NO, X . 3.07 „ '

Hi
Inlrral

d.»3.18

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Lo
late rut

OE _
.\=,92

d = I 85

Lo X . -.85

Tlnr I TUor 2

Figure 2. Mean Knowledge Comparisons over Time

The study model made one further tentative proposition: As infor-

mation dissemination on a topic continues over an extended time
period, the knowledge gap between those more and less interested
would begin to decrease. Ideally, this would have been tested among
several events of equivalent interest but differing in duration of media
coverage. The impeachment proceedings had been newsworthy for a
much longer period than the NFL strike, but they were much higher
in self-interest and social interest at both time periods. Therefore,
only a partial test of this idea is possible from the study data. Figure 2
presents relevant evidence. At the second testing for the impeach-
ment news event, the difference between the more and less interested
was negligibly smaller than at time one. The parallel difference for the
NFL news event was substantially larger than it had been at the first
testing. The directional differences between the two events support
the model's assertion. However, additional time segments and more
varied news events are necessary to adequately examine this idea.

Discussion
The news interest knowledge gain model examined has yielded
strong preliminary findings. This evidence suggests that specialized
interests in ongoing news events can yield more sensitive expecta-
tions about public information gain than such socioeconomic factors
as education. Interests can be identified which cut across education-
INTERESTS IN NEWS AND THE KNOWLEDGE GAP «9

ally developed preferences. This is a more optimistic proposition than

the original knowledge gap hypothesis; it offers an alternative route
by which public knowledge could be expanded. At the same time that
national efforts are directed at improving citizen educational oppor-
tunities, independent efforts might well be centered on (a) conducting
an interests assessment study of information-needy segments of the
population, (b) tying major interests identified in such a study to news
informational packages targeted for population subgroups, and (c)
conducting appropriate studies to determine if the distribution of

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knowledge achieves greater parity from this approach. Before such a
grand design is implemented, however, some more specific issues
may be culled from the present study. For one, self-interest was
negligible as a contributor to explaining knowledge gain. Either the
news events studied did not activate self-interest, or self-interest was
inadequately conceived and/or operationalized here. Before deleting it
from the model, a test needs to be carried out to detect its presence
among other topic areas which may be more susceptible to the influ-
ence of self-interest. For example, news events encompassing certain
religious, economic, ethical, or legal topics may be more responsive
to personal perceptions of well-being. It remains reasonable that the
information contained in some kinds of news events would be as-
sessed as of high personal import and strongly attended to for that
reason. As yet, we have not demonstrated that.
Since social interest was dominant, it is worthy of continued exam-
ination. The least complicated interpretation of that variable is that it
represents communicative facilitation between an individual and his/
her social groupings. However, social communication is likely to vary
among different groups within one's social milieu. Some news issues
may more likely be discussed with close friends than with co-workers;
others with family members more so than with nonfamily friends.
Considered this way, social interest should be examined subsequently
in terms of who are the co-communicants in relation to which topics
of social exchange.
These findings also point to an important distinction in the defini-
tion of knowledge. The present subdivision into factual and structural
knowledge is relatively crude, but prior studies which made no differ-
entiation as to the type of information gained ignored a useful discri-
minant. When one wishes to consider the transference of knowledge
among different population segments, it may be increasingly impor-
tant to move beyond superficial knowledge increments to the audi-
ence's understanding of processes and structural components associ-
ated with developing public events.
The proposed interest-knowledge gain model receives additional
support through some post hoc analyses conducted. For one, the
argument remains that the model should proceed from education
90 CENOVA AND GREENBEKG

through interest into knowledge gain, to the extent that education

contributes to an individual's entire configuration of news interests.
To examine this possibility, education was partialed out of the
interest-knowledge relationships to determine to what extent those
relationships would be altered. They changed very little. For NFL, at
time one, the correlation changed from .326 to .307; at time two, from
.355 to .346; for impeachment at time one, from .341 to .301; for time
two, from .391 to .362. These results provide little support for that
alternative explanation.

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Further, the underlying causal flow from interest to knowledge at
two time points was examined by means of the cross-lagged correla-
tional technique. The Rozelle-Campbell (1969) baseline criterion was
applied to assess causal relationships between the two variables. In
the resulting analyses, it was apparent that both diagonals exceeded
the baseline criterion for both events, so that each association (that of
time one interest with time two knowledge and time one knowledge
with time two interest) was functional and each variable appeared to
affect the other in a mutual interaction. For the NFL event, of
relatively brief duration, the association between knowledge at time
one with interest at time two (.374) exceeded the reverse association
(.302). For impeachment, the longer-lasting event, the correlation
between interest at time one and knowledge at time two (.277) was
greater than the reverse (.212). This suggests that the causal flow from
interest to knowledge may be the slower process, and may not have
manifested itself yet with the NFL event. Future work should com-
pare news events of equivalent as well as different durations in the
mass media to better ascertain the soundness of these tentative ob-
servations.
Finally, some consideration should be given to what it is that may
be generating self-interest and/or social interest in news events on the
part of audience subgroups, given that education is not a particularly
strong explanation. Interest is contributing to knowledge gaps, and
the resulting unequal distribution of knowledge is then adding to
further specialization in public affairs expertise. The social argument
to be examined is that it may be feasible to tap into existing interests
and to augment those interests with usable information. But the ori-
gins of those interests remain to be identified.

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