FACEBOOK UPDATES AND THE KNOWLEDGE GAP HYPOTHESIS Facebook, we may agree, was originally/primarily developed for users to reconnect with friend and family whom distance may have separated. However, the social medium since it gained popularity has expanded its reach to a variety of other things including advertisement, News, entertainment and so on. It is therefore very okay to upload photos and videos for one’s friends to catch up with happenings around one’s self. Users of the social medium use it for various reasons as meet their needs. It is expected that this medium and any other such medium (Twitter, Iinkedin, Skype, e.t.c) will reduce the gap in knowledge between the higher socioeconomic class and the lower socioeconomic class. The low price and availability of internet enabled mobile devices also support this belief. Unfortunately, it is not so. The knowledge gap hypothesis states that: “As the infusion of mass media information into a social system increases, higher socioeconomic status segments tend to acquire this information faster than lower socioeconomic status population segments so that the gap in knowledge between the two tends to increase rather than decrease” (Tichenor, Donohue and Olien 1970). From the hypothesis (given the time of its research), one can deduce that: - The higher socioeconomic group could afford means of information easier than the lower socioeconomic group - The higher socioeconomic group acquired more education thereby had enhanced ability to acquire more information than the lower group. Today, techonology is cheaper and the educated population is higher. Yet, from Facebook updates, the gap seems to be widening. Clearly, the reason is individual preference to serious over non-serious content. What is even more worrisome is that even among schooled persons the problem exists. It is said that “education is identified as a significant and positive correlate of a person’s tendency to prefer ‘serious’ over ‘non-serious’ print content”. For some persons, this remains unproved and we can observe in how many people will care to read this post as it may seem too long/serious. _Abuul Andropov
Posted on: Tue, 02 Jul 2013 22:53:24 +0000
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