Understanding the Knowledge Gap: The Role of Experts and Journalists

Decades of research attest to the strong positive association between an individual's socioeconomic status (SES) and his or her level of political knowledge. This study shows that differences in how the media cover political issues influence the distribution of knowledge in society by altering the strength of that relationship. I combine individual-level survey data with media content analysis to examine the variation in knowledge across more than four dozen issues. In a series of three studies, I show that higher levels of expert commentary in news stories reinforce SES-based differences in political knowledge. By contrast, greater levels of contextual coverage diminish those differences. These findings have important implications for how the mass media report on political developments and how they might better encourage citizen engagement with the political world.