The persistence of knowledge inequalities has serious consequences (Gaziano, 2001), but unfortunately it is the reality of the modern society, especially in the past century.The proposed research aims to study the relationship between the socio-economic status (SES) and political attitude and knowledge gaps of parents and their children of Macau and its neighbor: Zhuhai.
Knowledge gap hypothesis (Tichenor, Donohue and Olien, 1970) posits that people with higher socio-economic status (SES) tend to acquire the information from mass media at a faster rate than those with lower socio-economic status. As a result, the knowledge disparity between well-to-do and less-well-off becomes larger and larger. The offspring from high socio-economic status families may inherit some or all of the above advantages from their parents. Therefore, the offspring from high SES families may have more advantages than those from low SES families in acquiring current affairs knowledge. As a result, the differential knowledge between high and low SES parents may pass on to their next generation because of the direct and indirect influence of the SES of their parents.
Findings will test that the political attitudes and knowledge of parents are directly and indirectly reproduced in their children’s attitudes and knowledge levels. The disparity in parents’ current affairs knowledge based on SES differences may extend to their children. Such SES-based knowledge differences may persist across generations.
This research undertakes three major tasks. The first is to examine whether the SES based knowledge gap of parents will pass onto their descendants. The second and more specifically, to examine what is the relationship between the SES groups’ knowledge differential in a society experiencing political and economic transition, i.e. Macau and Zhuhai. Finally, we are also very glad to do the comparison between the ‘twin’ cities, similar in the size in square, population, and economic level, but different in political system.
Results are likely to contribute to knowledge about the interplay between social transition, interpersonal communication and mass communication in Macau. It also suggest recommendations to cross the knowledge gap based on SES of Macau society and assist to build up a harmonious society during the dramatic political and economic transition period.