What’s the two-step media theory?
Two-step media theory can be considered as one of the important theories (or communication model) in the media realm. In its historical context, it originated from the Katz and Lasarsfeld’s study, in order to determine the impact of opinion leaders within the women in Decatour. As a result, opinion leaders were found in each existing group at every different social and economic level.
Therefore, based on these findings, two-step flow model has been formed and developed. As the image shows, this model shows the cascading relationship. Mass media such as radio, newspaper, and television disseminates the ideas to the opinion leaders, and opinion leaders accept and digest these ideas, and then spit them out to the masses, which is relatively less active for information in contrast with opinion leaders.
In this top-to-bottom passing relationship, the opinion leader as gatekeeper plays an important role in controlling the information. They are not only the information receptor and the pure incarnation of mass media. In turn, they have their own intentions and ideas. What they express is to protect and intensify their stands by filtering, representing selectively, and distorting the information from the mass media. and as the result, the masses received second-hand information from opinion leaders.
The part of contemporary Chinese social media
Because of China’s political policy, the firewall which has been built to prevent national netizens from browsing off-wall sites (like Google, BBC, Youtube and so on.) may cause the negative impression of the national government on citizens.
Also because of this policy, the information dissemination between inside and outside wall is asymmetry. At the same time, domestic social media platforms like Weibo, QQ, WeChat have been developing dramatically and formed monopolies.
Among these social media platforms, users who hold a certain level of influence and public discourse are active on the international topic. Some of them are known as “ai guo da V” (in other words, they can be called patriotic opinion leaders.) Due to the internet wall, for most people, trying to navigate beyond the wall is quite difficult. Although people can use VPN as the medium to review outside websites, in recent years, it become more and more challenging to get a suitable VPN, because of policy retrenchment and repressing to the tools. It’s obvious that people are isolated. However, information blocking is quite beneficial for those patriotic opinion leaders. By the advantages of language and information differences, they can shape, select or wrong translate, and even distort the information to transmit the idea like “Western people are living in the dire straits.” to the masses. they defend and facilitate their stand and ideas through filtering.
As well as the two-step flow theory, these patriotic opinion leaders selectively spread the information with wrong translations, twisting and even making fake news. Masses are misguided conception and increased antagonism for Western people.
Reference information
Laughey, D. (2007). Key themes in media theory. Maidenhead Open University Press, pp.23–26.
