Abstract: Based on Chinese General Social Survey 2013 data, the article studies the impact of media use and information cognitive ability on public’s environmental science knowledge acquisition using regression analysis. The results show that the media use can improve the level of objective environmental knowledge and the subjective environmental knowledge at the same time, and information cognitive ability is the moderator between media use and the objective/subjective environmental knowledge acquisition. Specific media effects analysis shows that traditional media use has significant positive effects on objective/subjective environmental knowledge at the same time, while new media use only has a significant positive correlation with objective environmental knowledge. Among the traditional media, newspaper use has a significantly positive correlation with both objective and subjective environmental knowledge, while magazine use only has a significantly positive correlation with objective environmental knowledge, and radio and television use only have significantly positive correlation with subjective environmental knowledge; among the new media, Internet use has significant positive effects on objective/subjective environmental knowledge at the same time, and cellphone use has no significant correlation with environmental knowledge. The article also discusses the significance of the research findings at the policy level.