Local community ties, community-boundedness, and local public affairs knowledge gaps

This study focused on the roles that community integration and community-bo undedness (the relevance of a topic for a specific community) play on knowl edge gaps. Given the extensive evidence linking media exposure with communi ty ties, the authors hypothesized that ties with the local community could potentially mitigate local public affairs Knowledge gaps. They also examine d if the relevance of a topic to a subgroup would lead to lower knowledge g aps. A survey of 661 residents of Franklin County, Ohio, showed that wherea s community ties were unrelated to knowledge, community-boundedness could b e an important determinant of knowledge gaps on, local public affairs. Addi tional analysis of the data also suggests that length of association with t he community could be a potentially important contingent condition in the a melioration of knowledge gaps. The authors argue that their findings extend traditional findings of knowledge gaps that apply to geographically define d communities to studying "communities without propinquity."