Why was Paul Lazarsfeld’s ‘two (Autosaved) PDF

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Why was Paul Lazarsfeld’s ‘two-step flow’ model so significant within mass communication research? Use at least TWO studies to illustrate your answer. ‘The two-step flow’ model was introduced by Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson and Hazel Gaudet in The People’s Choice (1944) an American sociologist. The model was introduced in the book ‘The people’s choice: How the voter makes up his mind in a presidential campaign. New York: Columbia University Press’. The book looked in to the 1940 presidential elections and looked at those who actually read the newspapers at the time and those who did not have such access to mass media at that time. Firstly, we shall examine how the ‘two-step theory’ works and then look at the two case studies I have carefully selected to show how Paul Lazarsfeld’s ‘two-step flow’ model is significant within mass communication, and how opinion leaders such as Al Gore spread the message of climate change to millions of people around the world. The first of which is the 1940s US presidential Elections which was the introduction of the ‘two-step flow’ to the public. Secondly I will also examine the use of social media such as Twitter which utilises all the aspects of the two step flow from 70 years ago in today's world through the use of technology. Before Lazarfeld’s ‘two-step flow’, it was assumed that the influence of mass media on mass audience had a significant role with one another, however it was the research done by Paul Lazarfeld and others which showed us that there was only 5 percent of people who changed their voting preference as a result of media consumption and interpersonal communication of political information are far more relevant within a typical day. With the two step theory, those who are not opinion leaders (the audience) are more heavily influenced by other people's opinions for example, people who follow religions will see a pastor or a priest as an opinion leader and will be influenced by that opinion leader. “Opinion leaders have been thought to differ from other people, either because of their social position or status or by virtue of their greater interest in the topic at hand. It is the opinion leaders who obtain their information from their specific media sources where it is then passed on to the audience. Because of more highly developed belief systems, they might monitor the mass media more closely and more purposively than non-leaders” (Robinson, 1976). Opinion leaders are the ones who pick up the information easily through media communication and the pass what they know on to less-active members of the public. Kotchers article on identifying opinion leaders was very interesting. While conducting my research for this question I was able to understand what the characteristics of an opinion leader are and to what degree is someone an opinion leader. “Who one is—This includes certain personality characteristics or values held by the individual; What one knows—This includes the degree of knowledge and expertise that one has about a particular issue or product; and Whom one knows—This includes the number of contacts one has as part of their circle of friends and acquaintances” (Kotcher, 2009). This means that one can be an opinion leader in one subject but they may not be in another. For example, an outspoken scientist on climate change is an obvious opinion leader on the issue of pollution whereas if we were looking at politics and the elections, that scientist would become the audience. But the main point that we can see from this is that it's not the media that sends out the ideas, it is the opinion leaders such as Al Gore, who spread those ideas through interpersonal communication. Al Gore is an opinion leader on the issue of climate change. He is a huge advocate and is very connected with the issue over climate change which was brought to a worldwide stage through the 2006 documentary ‘An Inconvenient truth’, a documentary filmed by American filmmaker Davis Guggenheim. The documentary follows Al Gore as he does keynote speaking’s on the issue of climate change. “Since as early as the 1940s, scholars have understood the general importance of opinion leaders in shaping public preferences, informing fellow citizens, and altering behaviour” (Kotcher, 2009)

In the early days of the two-step flow that's where it would have ended however, in today's society it spreads through so many different ways of communication. The use of the internet has had a huge impact on the way opinion leaders have spread their ideas through huge platforms which many can create themselves through YouTube or social media. Mass communication is always changing. Even in 2018 the ideas from the ‘two-step flow’ are still applicable today through the social media platform, Twitter, we can see that the two step flow can easily be put into action and see it work for itself through its way of sending ideas through various opinion leaders to millions of followers worldwide. “The Internet also has been called “the great equalizer” because it can “equalize the balance of power between citizens and power barons” “(Bimber, 1998, pp. 138). This is a very modern way of looking at the two step flow where ideas can be created in seconds where they can be sent or spread throughout the entire world wide web through opinion leaders twitter followers who then ‘re-tweet’ which then continues to spread further and further. “The opinion leaders’ social influence supported by technological affordance allowed them to have greater power in forming and informing public opinions” (Choi, 2015, pp. 12). The article written by Sujin Choi, explores how twitter helps the spread of mass media and demonstrate how the ‘twostep flow’ works and enables the vast impact that twitter has on its users and ideas around the world. Choi states that in her study she was able to demonstrate that opinion leaders have somewhat of a social influence as they have their messages spread by others (followers) (Choi, 2015). “Even though technologies enabled them to create content by themselves, they were not engaged in content creation significantly more than would be expected by chance. In this regard, opinion leaders were influential but not content creators.” (Choi, 2015, pp. 12) “The more followers a Twitter user has, the more likely it is that their tweets will be retweeted. We tested this hypothesis with a dataset of Twitter political hashtags, which tend to be more persistent than other topics”[ CITATION Mar13 \l 3081 ]. This shows that the opinion leader can use twitter to share their ideas at the push of a button. It has become so easy in 2018 for opinion leaders to use social media as a platform for sharing and spreading their ideas as the more followers one opinion leaders has, the more people that idea will reach and thus continuing the spread of information, hence why such topics or messages on twitter can go viral in the space of a few minutes.

The US Presidential Elections of 1940 was where the team of Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson and Hazel Gaudet conducted their study which was published in 1944 in the work titled ‘The People’s Choice’. It is in this book where the ‘two-step flow’ model was introduced. The study was conducted to determine voting patterns and the relationship between the media and political power. It was clear in their work that the 1940s US elections that a vast majority of people got their information on the running candidates through interpersonal communication with other people who actually read about the campaign through local newspapers. “The newspaper editor, the columnist, the radio-all edge into the campaign by placing the weight of their authority behind the cause of their favourite candidate. Propaganda is let loose upon the land to control or inform, to constrain or tease potential voters into the appropriate decision” [ CITATION She95 \l 3081 ]. The Lazarsfeld, Berelson and Gaudet came to the understanding that it was interpersonal communication (word-ofmouth) which plays a huge role in the campaign and heavily affected the way people voted back in 1940s United States and not the mass media. “The heavy use of interpersonal sources (reported by over half of the respondents) strengthens the importance of opinion leaders in the election process in line with Lazarsfeld’s (1944) proposition that these influential individuals have the ability to convince people to develop or change their voting attitudes and behaviours. Thus, opinion leaders exert influence on audience behaviour via their personal contact” (Li, 2013, pp. 12)

It is clear that the ‘two-step flow’ has a significant impact on mass communication as it affects the way people use social media such as twitter and can impact the outcomes of events such as presidential elections. Throughout this essay I have looked at how the twostep flow works and how opinion leaders spread their ideas in today's society and how mass communication has been affected as it has changed significantly over the years. With the use of twitter, we can see how the ‘two-step flow’ works in today's modern society as It did back in 1940 during the elections.

Bibliography Bastos, M. T. (2013). Gatekeeping Twitter: message diffusion in political hashtags. São Paulo: University of São Paulo. Bimber, B. (1998). The Internet and Political Mobilization. Research Note on the 1996 Election Season, 1-11. Choi1, S. (2015). The Two-Step Flow of Communication in Twitter-Based Public Forums. Seoul, Korea: Social Science Computer Review. Li, J.-Y. (2013). Re-examining The Two-Step Flow of information in the age of digital media: The case of the 2012 presidential election in the United States. Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University. Matthew C. Nisbet, J. E. (2009). A Two-Step Flow of Influence? Opinion-Leader Campaigns on Climate Change. Washington, DC: American University, Washington, DC. Robinson, J. P. (1976). JOURNAL ARTICLE Interpersonal Influence in Election Campaigns: Two Step-Flow Hypotheses. Iowa, Ia, United States: Oxford University Press . Rogers, E. M. (2003). DIFFUSION OF INNOVATIONS. London: Collier Macmillan Publishers. Shearon A. Lowery, M. L. (1995). Milestones in mass communication research : media effects . White Plains, N.Y, United States: Longman Publishers USA,....