A Growing Knowledge Gap?

I was listening to a talk -- via the magic of iTunes -- by John Lloyd of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and he said one thing that caught my ear.  I'm working from memory, but he discussed focus group research that found a growing gap between those who follow public affairs and those who do not.  He didn't use the academic term knowledge gap, but his point was a good one and deserves discussion. 

It's a bit convoluted, but bear with me. 

With so many choices now available (cable TV, satellite, the Net, etc.), it's clearly easier now than ever before for those with little or no interest in the news to avoid the news.  Without such haphazard exposure to news, especially from TV, the least informed among us are even less informed -- or so goes the theory.  Those who want to keep up, those motivated to do so, or with the ability to do so, have never had it better.  So many ways, so many channels, so many choices. 

Hence, the gap.  Or the perceived gap, because as far as I  know no one has systematically tested this idea of late.  It makes sense, but it's damn hard to demonstrate a growing gap over time, especially as the kinds of questions we ask in surveys tend to differ just enough to make you wonder whether differences over time are real or merely an artifact of the kinds of survey questions offered in a given year.

My gut feeling?  The gap has widened, that Lloyd is right (as is Marcus Prior and a host of others, including myself, who work in this area).  But I'm not exactly sure how to demonstrate this with longitudinal data, at least not convincingly, though there are a few classic books from many years ago that did this (Paradox of Mass Politics being one).  I'm going to give it more thought because if I do find a way, it's an  interesting research question to tackle.  And maybe they'd invite me to Oxford to give a talk (I taught there for six weeks as part of the UGA@Oxford program, so I'm read to go back ... hint hint).

Public Trust in the News

Interesting report out, sponsored by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, that looks at the public trust in journalism. Summary here, full report here.

Those studied do not think journalists are dishonest so much as they find the product of journalism dishonest in that it's either confusing or fails to ring true when it describes the world in which they live. People could find more "useful, reliable, or amusing information elsewhere" (to quote the executive summary).

In place of individual medium loyalties (newspaper, TV news, etc.), people instead describe a "crowded media environment" that ranges from the silly to the serious. The three concepts of useful, reliable, and amusing show up in comments by real people, in one form or another. People, confronted with all this information, aren't sure who to believe. Adding my own here, I suspect that's one of the reasons we find people who claim to help it all make sense, from Jon Stewart to Rush Limbaugh, are quite successful today. They'll make sense of it all for you, even if one might quibble with the way, the fairness, of the sense they make.

There's a bit of political knowledge aspects here if you read carefully. Many people were confused in the U.S. presidential election. They simply don't know the backstory and often news accounts are written (or produced) with that assumption in mind. I've seen this myself as my teenage son struggles with a printed news story. The inverted pyramid simply confuses him because he's not starting with the prior knowledge necessary to make sense of a summary lede, which focuses on the latest information on top. Political knowledge suffers. People get frustrated. They look elsewhere for "sense making," often places where sense and sensible are not necessarily the same thing (i.e., Sean Hannity). And yet, and yet.

There's a lot here to digest and what I see reminds me of some other recent work. More on this report later, I hope.