Two-Step Flow Communication

Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, a sports and entertainment arena in Long Island, New York, encountered a public relations challenge in the 1990s. Nassau Coliseum, one of a few high-capacity venues in the New York metropolitan area, hosted the New York Islanders of the National Hockey League and concerts featuring headliners such as the Grateful Dead, New Kids on the Block, and Frank Sinatra. Nevertheless, the arena became a target for the world's first all-sports radio station, WFAN 660 AM in New York City. WFAN hosts perpetuated the image of a dreary "Nassau Mausoleum" with dim lighting, long bathroom and concession lines, and a leaky roof. By placing students in the decision-making situation that confronted the Nassau Coliseum executives, this case explores various approaches to reputation management at sports venues.

Our research on the social movement opposing proposed piracy legislation reveals novel societal opportunities and challenges caused by digitization. We summarize literature on the Katz and Lazarsfeld Two-Step Model of Communication and propose a new model of mass communication for the digital age. We develop a digital discourse bias framework comprised of three structural constraints (on authorship, citation, and influence) and three content restrictions (on frames, signatures, and emotion). Our findings paradoxically reveal social media affords emancipation with regard to structural constraints, but is hegemonic with regard to an important content restriction (i.e., frames). Lean social media mitigated structural advantages and exacerbated content problems. These findings suggest that, as with traditional media, some inevitable evils accompany the societal benefits of social media and that mass media is having a detrimental effect on public discourse. Compared to traditional mass media, digital mass media are in some ways emancipatory (i.e., permitting widespread participation in public discourse and surfacing of diverse perspectives) and in other ways hegemonic (i.e., contributing to ideological control by a few).

This study examines the relevance of traditional mass communication’s two-step flow-of-communication theory in relation to algorithmic personalization. I compare the two-step flow theory’s concept of personalized content through opinion leaders with the current notion of personalized algorithms, arguing that opinion leaders and algorithms both function as gatekeeping agents. I also discuss the nature and role of peer groups in the two cases, arguing that while in the original theory, groups were seen as relatively solid (family, friends, and work colleagues), groups in the algorithmic era are much more liquid, transforming according to data inputs and users’ behavior. Finally, the article also considers differences in the source of authority of opinion leaders and algorithms in both eras, as well as the different social settings and public awareness in the second step of the communication flow.

Relatively little historical research has focused on sports radio despite its growth in the American media landscape. From its inception in 1987, the world’s first all-sports radio station, WFAN in New York City, broadcast derisive commentary about a major hockey arena, Nassau Coliseum on Long Island. This historical article describes how three WFAN hosts, Don Imus, Mike Francesa, and Steve Somers, encouraged their listeners to view the venue as “Nassau Mausoleum,” a term that Somers popularized. Anecdotes from primary sources, including interviews with Somers and his producer, demonstrate that sports radio commentary can impact how listeners think and behave, exemplifying the two-step flow of communications. This paper also considers how public relations executives from Nassau Coliseum and its National Hockey League team, the New York Islanders, tried to combat the negative remarks.

The article analyzes the nature of communication flows during social conflicts via the digital platform Twitter. We gathered over 150,000 tweets from citizen protests for nine environmental social movements in Chile and used a mixed methods approach to show that long-standing paradigms for social mobilization and participation are neither replicated nor replaced but reshaped. In digital platforms, long-standing communication theories, like the 1955 two-step flow model, are still valid, while direct one-step flows and more complex network flows are also present. For example, we show that it is no contradiction that social media participants mainly refer to intermediating amplifiers of communicated messages (39% of the mentions from participants go through this two-step communication flow), while at the same time, traditional media outlets and official protest voices receive 80–90% of their mentions directly through a direct one-step flow from the same participants. While nonintuitive at first sight, Bayes’s theorem allows to detangle the different perspectives on the arising communication channel. We identify the strategic importance of a group of amplifying intermediaries in local positions of the networks, who coexist with specialized voices and professional media outlets at the center of the global network. We also show that direct personalized messages represent merely 20% of the total communication. This shows that the fine-grained digital footprint from social media enables us to go beyond simplistic views of a single all-encompassing step flow model for social communication. The resulting research agenda builds on long-standing theories with a new set of tools.

Der Beitrag widmet sich der Rolle des Internets bei der politischen Meinungsbildung deutsch-türkischer Migranten in Deutschland. Es werden die Ergebnisse einer explorativen Untersuchung ausgewählter deutsch-türkischer Weblogs vorgestellt und vor dem Hintergrund des Konzepts der Meinungsführerschaft diskutiert.

Immer mehr Menschen erhalten Nachrichten und Informationen zu aktuellen Ereignissen über ihre Kontakte in sozialen Online-Netzwerken wie Facebook. Die Frage nach der Rolle von Facebook bei der Diffusion von Medieninhalten, und damit nach der Dynamik öffentlicher Kommunikationsprozesse, gewinnt so an Bedeutung. Vor dem Hintergrund des ‚Multi-Step-Flow of Communication’ und Theorien sozialer Netzwerke ist besonders spannend, welche Inhalte Nutzer von welchen Kontakten (enge Freunde, entfernte Bekannte, Organisationen oder den Medien) auf Facebook erhalten. Um diese Frage zu beantworten, sind tradierte Methoden wie Inhaltsanalyse und Befragung für sich alleine jedoch unzureichend. Wir haben daher in einem Mehrmethoden-Design Befragung und Inhaltsanalyse kombiniert. 557 Facebook-Nutzer aus Deutschland und Österreich kopierten dafür bis zu fünf externe, auf Seiten außerhalb von Facebook führende Links in einen Online-Fragebogen, die sie zuletzt über ihren Facebook-Newsfeed erhalten hatten. Dabei zeigte sich beispielsweise, dass die Beziehungsqualität zwischen den Nutzern einen direkten Einfluss auf das Interesse an dem jeweiligen Inhalt hat, und zwar unabhängig von Thema und Urheber des verlinkten Inhalts. Bei der Untersuchung offenbarten sich jedoch auch einige methodische Probleme, für die der Beitrag sensibilisiert und Lösungsvorschläge anbietet.

Social networks like Facebook have become major platforms for news consumption. Consequently, questions about the role of Facebook in news diffusion and public communication dynamics are of increasing importance. Based on theories of the “multi-step-flow of communication”, this paper asks social media users which of their contacts (close friends, aquaintances, organisations or the media) share the news they receive and what influence, in any, this has on their interest in the messages. To answer these and similar questions, the isolated used of surveys and content analyses is insufficient. We combined questionnaires and the analyses of message content into a multi-method approach that asked Facebook users to copy the links they received on Facebook into our survey tool and answer questions about these messages. After analysing the survey data and shared content, we were able to show that the form of relationship between a user and the person who shared the content has a positive effect on the interest in the content, regardless of its topic. However, the study did reveal some methodological and methodical problems with the approach which will be discussed.

"Con la democratización en el acceso y producción de contenidos que ha traído consigo la web 2.0., el ciudadano se enfrenta a un enorme flujo informativo, que con frecuencia puede conducirle a la saturación y al que resulta imprescindible dotar de orden y sentido. Paralelamente a la función desarrollada en esa dirección por los medios periodísticos, también en el ámbito digital emerge con fuerza la figura de “líderes de opinión” o "influentials": aquellos que, por medio de su actividad online (publicación de tweets y entradas en blogs, actualización de su estado en redes sociales, recomendación de lecturas, etc.) y de manera más o menos consciente, cumplen con la función bien de crear contenidos, bien de filtrarlos hacia personas sobre las que ejercen influencia personal.

A este respecto, ha adquirido una creciente relevancia el índice Klout, que evalúa la influencia de una persona o una marca a través del análisis de su presencia en medios sociales. Basándose en algoritmos que cuantifican más de 35 variables, Klout determina de 0 a 100 el índice de influencia del usuario y categoriza su liderazgo (experto, creador de tendencias, activista, famoso, etc.).

El objetivo de esta comunicación es doble. Por un lado, analizar si el índice Klout constituye una medición válida de la influencia en la era digital. Por otro, demostrar que la importancia de los “líderes de opinión” en la comunicación pública es una cuestión que se remonta a los trabajos clásicos de la investigación en comunicación de masas y que tiene como estudios pioneros, entre otros, "The People’s Choice" (Lazarsfeld, P., Berelson, B. y Gaudet, H.: 1944) y "Personal Influence" (Katz, E. y Lazarsfeld, P.: 1955). Así pues, más de medio siglo después y con las necesarias adaptaciones metodológicas que exige el nuevo entorno mediático, sigue en gran medida vigente el paradigma del “two-step flow communication” o flujo de la comunicación en dos pasos, esto es, que la información que parte desde los medios masivos es recibida y retransmitida por los líderes de opinión a las demás personas de los grupos sociales.

Palabras clave: influencia personal, líderes de opinión, Klout, doble flujo informativo, comunicación digital.

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Web 2.0 has brought a democratization in the information access and content production that has ultimately led the citizen to face a huge flow of information. This can often lead to an information overload and therefore it is essential to provide some order and meaning. In the digital realm emerges the strong figure of "opinion leaders" or influentials: those who, through their online activity (publishing of tweets and blog posts, updating of status in social networks, recommendation of readings...), create or filter content to people over which they exert personal influence.

In this context it has become increasingly important the Klout score, which evaluates the influence of a person or a brand through the analysis of their social media presence. Based on algorithms that quantify over 35 variables, the Klout score determines from 0 to 100 the user’s influence and leadership style (specialist, tastemaker, activist, celebrity...).

The aim of this paper is double. On the one hand, to analyze whether the Klout score is a valid measurement method of the influence in the digital age. On the other hand, to show the importance of "opinion leaders" in public communication studies. This is a classic issue in mass communication research and there are some pioneering works: "The People's Choice" (Lazarsfeld , P., Berelson, B. & Gaudet, H., 1944) and "Personal Influence" (Katz, E. & Lazarsfeld, P.: 1955), among others. Thus, more than half a century later and with the necessary methodological adaptations required by the new media environment, the paradigm of "two-step flow communication" is still alive: the information that comes from the media is actually received and broadcasted by the opinion leaders.

Keywords: personal influence, opinión leaders, Klout, two-step flow communication, digital communication."