Application of Knowledge Based Theory in Media Issue

Honesty Statement

I hereby state that this report is all my individual effort and I have not taken the help from any single person for making this report. I also assure that all the work in this paper is my own and I did not copy this work from any source. I have not lent this paper to anyone and do not have any plans to lend it to anybody in future.

Table of Content

Contents

Introduction4

Theoretical Background5

Core Assumptions and Statements6

Source: Tichenor, Donohue and Olien (1970)8

Important Concepts9

Assumptions of Knowledge Gap Theory10

Criticism on Knowledge Gap Theory10

Application of Theory in Media Situation12

Collective Evidence16

Analysis20

Conclusion21

References25

Application of Knowledge Based Theory in Media Issue

Introduction

The knowledge based theory is very important theory which is used for discussing the social impacts of information society. This theory is very important communication theory used for the purpose of defining the information of the information society in public debates. This theory is mainly based on the idea that information society mainly relies on the informed society and it is an important aspect for everyone to be taken into consideration. On the other hand, the other side of the people totally argues against this theory and provides another reason for this theory. As per them it is very complicated situation that may increase the digital division which means there can be an increase in the social gap between the information provided to poor and the information provided to rich (Awade, 1999). There can be a knowledge gap between the rich and those poor people who does not have any proper access to the different digital technologies including the internet and computer. There is also a prediction that the use of internet can be a biggest threat for the society in terms of classifying the society into two different groups. The first group is one with complete access to the internet which is the elite class and the second group is one with no access to internet i.e. the poor class. Though, this is a very serious concern in terms of politics because there is an assumption that the knowledge and information is mainly based on the issue of social power (Bryan, 2000). Thus, the knowledge inequality can be the biggest problem in terms of getting excluded from the social inequalities and social power. This is the reason why the media debates and other policy contexts have not made any reference on the theoretical background of the increased gap which is created on the basis of knowledge gap theory. Thus, it can be said that the knowledge based theory plays a very important role in media applications but a solid empirical data can be very helpful for such cases. For instance, there are many benefits of internet usage over the traditional methods of mass media, but on the basis of knowledge gap theory there is an issue that whether this source is available to each and every person on equality basis or not. This theory mainly focus on the issue ...