Bloggers as Opinion Leaders
Over 50 years of mass communication research and we still don’t know how media effects work. We can map an effect; we can see the numbers going up and down, we know media influences public opinion somehow but how? It’s not as simple as brainless imitation of media behavior, so what is it than?
While pondering that, Elihu Katz was looking at models of personal influence as a different issue. He suggested we all have opinion leaders among our acquaintances that mitigate media messages for us and we trust their opinion and often shape ours accordingly. He called it the two steps flow hypothesis.
And now we’ve got a third component in this equation: the web, a space in-between mass media and interpersonal communication and now we’re wondering how bloggers or other web agencies make influence happen. Half the literature on bloggers compares them to journalists assuming their influence model is mass media like. The other half tries to frame bloggers in terms of collective action or even social movements suggesting that their influence might resemble personal influence models.
Those social networks early media research tried to map are alive on today’s web. But the meaning of opinion leaders has changed. They no longer have to be real life contacts. The real life component in the perception of acquaintance and trust may no longer be relevant. In a time when boundaries between mass media and inter personal communication blur, your personal connections might be colonized too by commercialism and be interest driven, while an idealist blogger you follow might earn your trust. It is the genuine passion and reflective transparency that makes an opinion leader whether he is a journalist, a blogger or a childhood friend.
I came to think of the need to redefine opinion leaders in the age of the web during my ethnography of the political campaigns in the Israeli blogosphere. Here’s a paper I gave about it at AoIR 10 a few weeks ago:
bloggers as opinion leaders: AoIR 10 paper from carmelv on Vimeo.
Blogger’s influence was evident and could be separated from mass media due to pushing different agendas, but the process of influence in the making was yet to be analyzed through defining blogging practices. Do they do it like journalists or like activists? The answer was a little bit of both. But maybe both aren’t that different. Maybe the cognitive process of influence is one, maybe mass media stories always influenced us in the same way personal influence worked, but this could be spotted only after getting used to celebrity and fandom culture.
Maybe we feel personally close to mass media figures, we perceive their passion as genuine, and we trust their recommendation like we’d trust a friend’s. Maybe that’s why we let journalists and actors become our politicians too. Opinion leaders cannot mean people we actually know anymore because the meaning of actually knowing has changed and dissolved into a subjective perception of itself.
To be continued (in terms of research)….
Tags: AoIR, bloggers, bloggers as activists, bloggers as journalists, bloggers impact, bloggers influence, blogging, blogging practices, Elihu Katz, mass media influence, opinion leaders, personal influence, political bloggers, social networks, trust, two steps flow
Realistically, though, internet audience is nowhere near that of the major news outlets
in Israel maybe. I’m not sure it’s true about the huffington post for instance. but than again Ariana huffington is no longer a disinterested passionate blogger in any possible way.
however this isn’t the issue. your readership can be high but if u dunno how influence works it wont’ matter. you’re not just changing behavior by becoming exposed.