The knowledge gap hypothesis—the assumption that an increasing flow of news on a topic fosters a gap in knowledge between the more and the less educated—has been demonstrated in numerous studies throughout the past 60 years. Knowledge gaps are attributed to individual differences in media selection and information processing capacities. However, it has been difficult to investigate the relative influence of selection and processing with conventional research methods. We used an innovative combination of individual-level digital trace and survey data collected in Switzerland ( n = 403) and Germany ( n = 471) to study the widening of knowledge gaps throughout the communication process. The data were collected at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, an extraordinary period of extremely high information inflow on a novel topic. Our analyses show that individuals with lower education use less online news in general and less COVID-19-related news in particular than those with higher education, which results in a difference in knowledge about the origin of COVID-19 (but not on its severity). However, those with lower education do not have a similar share of COVID-19-related news in their news diet, and they learn even more than those with higher education from the COVID-19-related news that they are exposed to. Our study thus suggests that knowledge gaps are predominantly a result of selecting into news use.

中文翻译：

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追踪知识差距：使用数字跟踪数据调查教育对新闻曝光和知识的影响

知识差距假说——假设关于某个主题的新闻流量增加会在受教育程度较高和较低的人之间形成知识差距——在过去 60 年的大量研究中得到了证明。知识差距归因于媒体选择和信息处理能力的个体差异。然而，用传统的研究方法研究选择和加工的相对影响一直很困难。我们使用了在瑞士 （n = 403） 和德国 （n = 471） 收集的个人层面数字追踪和调查数据的创新组合，以研究整个沟通过程中知识差距的扩大。这些数据是在 COVID-19 大流行开始时收集的，这是一个关于新主题的信息流入极高的特殊时期。我们的分析表明，与受过高等教育的人相比，受教育程度较低的人总体上使用的在线新闻较少，特别是与 COVID-19 相关的新闻较少，这导致对 COVID-19 起源的了解存在差异（但对其严重程度没有差异）。然而，那些受教育程度较低的人在他们的新闻饮食中没有类似份额的 COVID-19 相关新闻，他们从他们接触到的 COVID-19 相关新闻中学到的东西甚至比受过高等教育的人更多。因此，我们的研究表明，知识差距主要是选择新闻使用的结果。