Media influence reaches most people through opinion leaders who interpret it for their networks.
Katz and Lazarsfeld's 1955 finding from the 1940 election study. It corrected the hypodermic model of media effects, and the influencer economy is the same structure with the intermediaries paid.
In practice
- A public health campaign reaches most households through the four people on the street whom everyone already asks about such things.
- A firm's all-staff email is read by everyone and believed only once the three long-serving team leaders have said what they make of it.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Communication & Media
- Essay
- Theories of what stands between an event and its audience