Following James's categories, "knowledge about" is formal knowledge; "acquaintance with" is unsystematic, intuitive knowledger or "common sense." When the above are regarded as being points on a continuum, news also has a point characteristic of its transient and ephemeral quality. The extent to which news circulates determines the extent to which the members of a society participate in its political action. News is "something that will make people talk," tends to have the character of a public document, and is characteristically limited to events that bring about sudden and decisive changes. Exclusive attention to some things inhibits responses to others resulting in a limitation of the range and character of the news to which a society will respond collectively or individually. The function of news is to orient man and society in an actual world.
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Robert E. Park (1940) studied this question.