Personal Influence: The Part Played by People in the Flow of Mass Communications

Katz, Elihu, and Paul F. Lazarsfeld. 1955.  Personal Influence: The Part Played by People in the Flow of Mass Communications. Glencoe, Il: Free Press. Pp. 15-42, 137-48, 187-97, 321-34.

Overview
Two-step flow of communication: most people form their opinions under the influence of opinion leaders, who in turn are influenced by the mass media. So according to this model, ideas flow from mass media to opinion leaders, and from them to a wider population.

Media influences people; this influence is shaped by five intervening variables:
 * 1) Exposure: Exposure assumes both attention and access. No access to different political ideology in totolitarian regime; no attention to systemic injustice if you are too busy living in poverty.
 * 2) Medium: Which is the most effective at persuading people - tv, radio, newspaper, or yard signs?
 * 3) Content: Candidate can be made more appealing by use of rhetoric, charm, etc.
 * 4) Psychological predispositions: Prejudices can modify, distort, or block a message. Causes on to actively resist message of tolerance. Peasants don't deserve healthcare.
 * 5) Interpersonal Relationships: Social environment and character of interpersonal relations is the middle man between most people and mass media.

Transmission of Communication can be affected in the following ways:
 * 1) Frequency of peer association
 * 2) Associations involving shared norms
 * 3) Being like-minded to raise your status amongst the cool kids
 * 4) Being in a group with a communiction system hooked up with mass media
 * 5) Being near of social outlet

Place in Literature
These two legends in sociology do not discover contextual effects, but they show how the study of Mass Communications has repeadetly "rediscovered" the role of contextual effects even prior to 1955. They reveal how studies in mass media falsely assume that individuals are atomized - distinct from one another. It is obvious to us today that individuals are influenced by not just the media, but also by other individuals.

Personal Idea
The Republican party wants Americans to blame Democrats for the govt shutdown more than (or equal to) Republicans. Republican politicians and conservative media only has direct access to a few million staunch conservatives, who become Republican opinion leaders. These opinion leaders then influence their environment. The Democratic party attempts to do the opposite.

Hypothetically: why is the Republican party generally better at spreading their ideas than democrats?

Hypothesis: Opinion leaders are more effective when they all convey the same message with the same frame, et ceteris paribus.

Logic: If I am not a partisan, I am exposed to opinion leaders from both parties:

-Four different friends express pro-Dem messages on the shutdown, but each message has a different frame.

- Four different friends express pro-GOP messages on the shutdown, and each message uses the exact same frame.

Theoretcally, Republicans opinion leaders win the influence of the independent through their use of partisan frame purity, assuming equal conditions of exposure, medium, content, pysch predispositions. In reality, I suspect this to be the case based on my personal observations on facebook. I see dems using a variety of frames, while republicans seem to be using the same partisan frame, as if it was directly from Fox News. Also, Fox News tends to systematically frame an issue in the same way across multiple programs.

Scratch pad
Media's observation of me  or my social environment  + media's observation of others + my personal observations of me  or my social environment  + my personal observations of others +  political party's ability to mobilize me or my social environment  +my social enviornment's ability to modify all prior variables  = my political thinking