Essay: The two-step flow of communication model

The two-step flow of communication model is defined as a theory of communication that proposes that interpersonal interaction has a far stronger effect on shaping public opinion than mass media outlets (Pemba, 2017). It says that the majority form don’t seem to be directly influenced by mass media, and instead form their opinions are based on opinion leaders who interpret media messages and place them into context. According to the two-step flow model, ideas pass from mass media to opinion leaders, and then from them to a wider population. Opinion leaders spread their own interpretation of data and add some information they learned from the actual media content. Opinion leaders are those who are firstly exposed to a particular media content, and who explain it based on their own belief. They then begin to infiltrate these opinions through the overall public who become seen as opinion followers. In this process social influence is created and adjusted by the ideals and opinions of each specific elite media group, and by these media group’s opposing ideals and opinions and in combination with popular mass media sources (Hannan, 2011). Moreover, the two-step flow theory improved our understanding of how the mass media influences decision making. The theory refined the capability to predict the influence of media messages on audience behavior, and it helped justify why some media campaigns sometimes didn’t alter the attitudes and behaviors of the audiences. Based on the two-step flow hypothesis, the term personal influence came to illustrate the process intervening between the media’s direct message and the audience’s reaction to that message (Chaiko, 2012). Opinion leaders tend to be just like those they influence based on personality, interests, or demographics. These leaders tend to influence others to vary their attitudes and behaviors. This hypothesis provided a basis for the two-step flow theory of mass communication.
One of the first to go on Communications analysis, was the first to introduce the distinction between administrative research and critical regarding the media Lazarsfield believed that critical research criticizes the media institutions themselves for the perspective ways they serve dominant social groups (Lazarsfield, 1955). The two-step flow of communication hypothesis was first introduced by Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet in The People’s Choice, a 1944 study focused on the process of decision-making during a Presidential election campaign (Katz & Lazarsfeld, 1955). These researchers were expecting to seek out empirical support for the direct influence of media messages on voting intentions though their book. In consistent with the researchers, mass media data is conducted to the forms through opinion leadership. The people who have the most access to the media and has a more understanding of media content, they describe and distribute the content to the others. They were shocked to find that informal and private, contacts were mentioned much more regularly than exposure to radio or newspaper as sources of influence on voting behavior. Together with this, Katz and Lazarsfeld developed the two-step flow theory of mass communication.
This theory asserts that data from the media moves in two seperate stages. First, individuals who are referred to as opinion leaders, pay nearby attention to the mass media and its messages. Second, they receive the data and pass it to their active audiences. Personal influence was created to check with the method of intervening between the media’s direct message and the audience’s final reaction to the message. Furthermore, the two-step hypothesis doesn’t adequately describe the flow of learning. Everett Rogers, “Diffusion of Innovations”, cites one study, in which two-thirds of respondents accredited their awareness to the mass media rather than face-to-face communication (Zhang, 2015). However, Lazarsfeld’s two-step hypothesis is an adequate description to know the media’s influence on belief and behavior. If someone is exposed to new observations that are inconsistent with future beliefs, he or she is divided into unequal parts. This person can then get recommendations from their opinion leader, to supply them with further cognitions to bring them back to be equal. In addition, this theory may be valid during the era when opinion leaders were the only ones to have easy access to media contents (Nunes, 2017). Nowadays, there’s a free flow of information in order for anyone who wants may have access to media contents while not relying well on opinion leaders. For instance, in Twitter networks it is no contradiction that average Twitter users mainly mention intermediating opinion leaders in their tweets, while at the same time traditional mass media outlets receive most of their mentions directly through a direct one-step flow from the same users (Hilbert, Vasquez, and Halpern, 2016).  This shows that the two-step model doesn’t appear to be dead, nor old, but merely one in every of many ways’ communication flows in trendy networks. Limitations of the theory include: flow of data, its more complex, and it acquires over two steps within the flow of communication. The two-step method presents some advantages to a community with restricted access to data. One such benefit is that it permits those members of the community who have restricted access to media data to additionally gain insight concerning occurrences that are happening within the world around them. For example, those members without tv and radio sets will find out about developments within the nationwide political landscape from their opinion leader with increasing media information access in their communities. Lazarsfield (1944) posits that media information is mediated through our social relationship (Katz, 1944). For fifty years, the group of influential are considered to be vital enough to track. Regularly, we notice that reports and studies are performed with effort to unlock the key to reaching these influentials. According to Diane Crispell, these people are the “thought leaders” and “pioneer consumers”. “Influentials are better educated and more affluent than the average American, but it is their interest in the world around them and their belief that they can make a difference that makes them influential”, (Crispell, 1989). Robinson (1976) asserts that, “Opinion leaders are different from followers because of their social position or status or by virtue of their greater interest in the topic at hand (Robinson, 1976).”
One will assert that the two-step theory was a revolutionary manner of viewing mass communication. Though the empirical ways behind the two-step flow of communication weren’t good, the idea did give a believable clarification for information flow. The opinion leaders don’t replace the media, however they guide the discussions of media. Brosius explains the benefits of the opinion leader theory well in his 1996 study of agenda setting, “The opinion leaders should not be regarded as replacing the role of interpersonal networks but, in fact, as reemphasizing the role of the group and interpersonal contacts” (Brosius, 1996). Lazarsfeld and his associates detailed five characteristics of personal contact that give their theory more validity: non-purposiveness/casualness, flexibility to counter resistance, trust, and persuasion without conviction (NJUGUNA, ‎2012). The idea of the theory is to be two-stepped within the sense that it presents opinion leaders as direct of knowledge from the Mass Media then they forward this information to the overall public with their personal interpretation. We can say that Communication specialists came out with a conclusion that human behavior and thoughts don’t seem to be modified simply by obtaining the message. It takes so much time as this method it too slow and it’s transmitted by the opinion leader. Therefore, researchers of mass communication cannot treat the general public as a consistent mass audience that actively processes and responds to media messages uniformly. This theory has improved our understanding of how mass media influence decision making.