International Encyclopedia of Communication Online

Extract

The two-step flow of communication hypothesis was first formulated by →  Paul F. Lazarsfeld and his colleagues in their classical study on the 1940 American presidential election (1944). It states that there is usually no direct influence of the mass media on the general public. Rather, “ideas often flow from radio and print to the opinion leaders and from them to the less active sections of the population” ( Lazarsfeld et al. 1944 , 151). This assumption, challenging the popular idea of strong direct media effects on the public (→  Stimulus–Response Model ), turned out to be one of the most influential ideas in communication research from the 1940s to at least the 1960s. While recent research has contradicted the original hypothesis in its rigid form, many of its underlying ideas have stimulated fruitful further research. This holds especially true for the concept of opinion leadership and the analysis of social networks (→  Network Analysis ; Opinion Leader ). In The people's choice , Lazarsfeld and colleagues found that 17 percent of the voters had changed their voting intentions during the campaign. Two thirds of all voters mentioned radio and newspaper as a “helpful source” for making their voting decisions. From today's point of view, these results seem to indicate relatively strong media effects. Nevertheless, the authors had expected to find much stronger effects – as ... log in or subscribe to read full text