Opinion Leadership - The People's Choice Study

The two-step flow of communication hypothesis was first introduced by Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet in The People's Choice, a 1944 study focused on the process of decision-making during a Presidential election campaign (2, p. 168). Prior to this study, the "hypodermic needle theory" (subsequently named) implied mass media had a direct, immediate and powerful effect on its audiences (27, p. 9). "The mass media in the 1940s and 1950s were perceived as a powerful influence on behavior change" (21, p. 284).

Several factors contributed to this "strong effects" theory of communication (14, on-line), including:

the fast rise and popularization of radio and television,
the emergence of the persuasion industries, such as advertising and propaganda,
The Payne Fund studies of the 1930s, which focused on the impact of motion pictures on children, and
Hitler's monopolization of the mass media during WWII to unify the German public behind the Nazi party (27, p. 10).

The People's Choice study examined the effects of mass media (specifically radio, television and newspapers) on political behavior, which became the decisive end of the hypodermic needle theory and the beginning of the two-step flow model (21, p. 285).

The study involved a panel of 600 voters from Erie County, Ohio. The voters were interviewed at intervals throughout the campaign to determine what factors had the greatest influence on their decision-making. Although the study was designed to demonstrate the impact of the media in influencing voting decisions, the findings reported in The People's Choice indicated the flow of mass communications may be less direct and powerful than previously assumed (27, pp. 11-12), thus a "weak effects" theory of communication was born (14, on-line). Three main ideas were highlighted in The People's Choice report (27, pp. 12-13):

1. The impact of personal influence in the decision-making process, which "led the researchers to conclude that personal contacts appear to have been more frequent and more effective than mass media in determining voting decisions" (27, p. 12).
2. The flow of personal influence was determined by the researchers to be "activated by certain individuals who were to be found on every level of society and, presumably, were very much like the people whom they influenced" (27, p. 12).
3. The relationship between the mass media and opinion leaders was determined by the researchers to be a two-step flow of communication. "Ideas often flow from radio and print to opinion leaders [who were more exposed to the mass media] and from them to the less active sections of the population" (27, pp. 12-13).

Despite a number of criticisms by subsequent researchers, The People's Choice study is considered one of the most prominent studies in mass communication research due to its comparison between the mass media and personal flow of information and influence (27, p. 13). Criticisms are directed at the oversimplification of the two-step flow of communication, thus the underestimation of the direct influence of the media. The process of influence is said to be more complex than a single group of opinion leaders listening to the mass media, then feeding their opinions to a group of passive followers (2, p. 169). Instead, people who influence others are themselves influenced by others in the same topic area, resulting in an exchange. Opinion leaders are, thereby, both a disseminator and recipient of influence (18, p. 45). With this in mind, a more accurate portrayal of the communication flow would be a multi-step process, rather than simply a two-step process (2, p. 169).

Subsequent research, such as the Decatur study, implemented a more systematic and thorough methodology aimed at identifying opinion leaders and their role in the flow of communications.