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Although numerous media literacy interventions have been developed and delivered over the past 3 decades, a comprehensive meta-analytic assessment of their effects has not been available. This study investigates the average effect size and moderators of 51 media literacy interventions. Media literacy interventions had positive effects (d=.37) on outcomes including media knowledge, criticism, perceived realism, influence, behavioral beliefs, attitudes, self-efficacy, and behavior. Moderator analyses indicated that interventions with more sessions were more effective, but those with more components were less effective. Intervention effects did not vary by the agent, target age, the setting, audience involvement, the topic, the country, or publication status.

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This study examined the effects of multitasking on persuasion, including comprehension and counterarguing of persuasive messages, which were presented in three different contexts: (a) nonmultitasking with full attention paid to the message, (b) multitasking with primary attention paid to the message, and (c) multitasking with secondary attention paid to the message. Consistent with predictions, the results suggested that multitasking reduced the actual and perceived levels of comprehension and also reduced counterarguing. The implications for research on persuasion are further discussed.

This kriowledge gap meta-analysis examines (a) average effect size of the gap, (b) impact of media publicity, and (c) moderators of thc gap. Positive correlation between education and leuel of knowledge (r = .28) was found, uiith no differences in the size of the gap (a) over time and (b) between issues of higher and lower publicity. However, gap magnitude was rnoderated by topic, setting, knowledge measure, and study design, but not by publication status, country, and sampling method. Relatively smaller gaps were found for (a) health-science topics compared to social-political topics and (b) local/personal issues compared to international issues. ~~~ ~ ~~~Because social power is often based on knowledge, relative dispossession of knowledge may lead to relative deprivation of power.' The knowledge gap hypothesis proposes that the media can increase gaps in knowledge, predicting, "As the infusion of mass media information into a social system increases, segments of the population with higher socioeconomic status tend to acquire this information at a faster rate than the lower status segments so that the gap in knowledge between these segments tends to increase rather than decrease."2 This hypothesis produced a considerable body of research and stimulated an active debate about the existence and nature of a socially structured knowledge gap. Although more than one hundred studies have examined the knowledge gap,3 relatively few studies have synthesized the knowledge gap literature, though there are three narrative reviews that summarize the knowledge gap l i t e r a t~r e .~ A narrative review can be misleading because it reviews previous works by aggregating results of significance tests without systematic decision rules and procedures.' A meta-analytic review attempts to avoid this problem by addressing effect sizes rather than statistically significant results.This present study, a meta-analysis providing a systematic summary of previous research on the knowledge gap hypothesis, has three specific goals: (a) to obtain an average size for the knowledge gap, (b) to examine the impact of media publicity on the knowledge J&MC Q Yoori Hroang is a Ph.D. candidate in the School offournalisn~ and Mass Communication at the University ofMinnesota, and Se-Hoon feong is an assistant professor in the School offournalism and Mass Communication at Korea University.