American communication scholars Paul Lazarsfeld and Elihu Katz developed the two-step flow theory in the 1940s. Its main role is to dissect the changes and impact of mass media-based information in the communication process. In such a premise most of the information received by the masses as individuals is spread through human communication, giving a certain class to the transmission of information.
How the two-step flow theory works from different perspectives
Groups and individuals
- Groups
Individuals socializing as a unit will form a small group, through the theory of six degrees of separation we can learn that we can know any stranger through six people, forming a very large social group, the scope of information dissemination in social networking is also infinite, and individuals will tend to receive information from the “opinion leaders” in the social networking group, and listen to and ingest the views of the social networking group.
- Individuals
From an individual’s point of view, this is the basis for the mass media dissemination of information, people often exchange known information through communication with others, and re-dissemination, with the individual as the starting point, often using the simplest way, such as chatting, social media forwarding, telephone chatting and so on, the most common daily way, the information in this process will also be continuously processed and modified, will continue to be mixed with many personal views continue to be disseminated, and the individual may also become an “opinion leader”, to become a bridge between different groups to promote the flow of different views and information.
Overall, the secondary communication theory is to exchange and disseminate information between social groups composed of individuals, in which individuals will selectively accept and evaluate the information between the information dissemination, and so the secondary dissemination of information sent out by opinion leaders will inadvertently influence the views and behaviors of others. By understanding the theory of secondary communication, we can better understand the process of information dissemination and information.
Take a simple example
A small-scale protest was launched in order to make the government protect the environment, and a social media personality who has a lot of followers posted this activity on social media, the news related to this activity or even news will spread rapidly on social media, thus attracting the attention of the public. In this process, the protest is the source of information, and the socialite is the opinion leader, through the influence of the opinion leader will let most people know about the activity, and even change some people’s views, in the process of information dissemination, the disseminator will interpret the information from their own different positions and ideas, and spread again to complete the information closed loop.
In the context of the general environment of the secondary communication theory will also have more different impacts and effects, such as cross-cultural communication, in the process of information dissemination of different growth background cultural background or different political positions may have different understanding and views of the same information, and the results can reflect the multiple interpretation of the information and dissemination, but also can be analysed on the different factors on the understanding of the information caused by the impact of.
Your blog is well-tuned, enabling me to better understand what a two-step flow model is, and the examples you give are vivid enough to bring people into a good environment to understand.