Knowledge production and political participation: Reconsidering the knowledge gap theory in the Web 2.0 environment

Abstract

The rise of user-generated content on the Internet calls people's attention to individual's production of political knowledge. This study attempts to shift the research agenda from knowledge possession in the classic knowledge gap theory to knowledge production, which is arguably a more important step toward the building of democratic and participatory public sphere. Findings from a national survey reveal that there are gaps in the production of political knowledge among different social groups. The patterns, however, vary between different forms of knowledge production. Demographics, political ideologies, and the frequency of political talk and general Internet use all correlate to different forms of knowledge production in different ways. In the meantime, knowledge production, particularly in the forms of posting comments and pictures, has a significant and positive relationship with political participation. While replicating portions of the structural inequalities offline, online knowledge production presents some new opportunities to shrink the knowledge gap between different social strata.