Opinion Leaders: Is Anyone Following?

Abstract

ARE there opinion leaders in the sense that some individuals within the general public change their opinions earlier than others? Are there followers in the sense of a lagging public, or are "opinion leaders" the only people discussing and making up their minds on the major issues of the day?The General Electric Company has been conducting interviews with national samples of adults by telephone every quarter since 1964. One purpose of these studies is to alert management to changes in public opinion, providing an early indication of new influences that may affect the company. Beginning in 1972 questions were included to identify respondents whose opinions might be expected to change earlier than the total sample. The Katz/Lazarsfeld opinion leadership questions reported in Personal Influence (1955) were adapted to this purpose. Two basic assumptions about how opinions are formed were implicit in this attempt.First, it was assumed that the process of opinion formation is social. When faced with an unclear situation which requires some Abstract This paper describes an attempt to identify respondents whose opinions change earlier than others. The Katz/Lazarsfeld opinion leadership questions were adapted for use in quarterly surveys conducted by telephone with national samples of adults. Between 1975 and 1978, changes were detected in public attitudes toward six government activities. Recent advisors (opinion leaders) changed from 3 to 14 quarters earlier than nonadvisors. Further, recent advisors within each of several demographic groups changed earlier than others in their group. In at least one case, recent advisors among those with a high school education or less changed earlier than college-educated respondents.Joan S. Black is Manager, Survey Operations, for the General Electric Company at corporate headquarters in Fairficld, Connecticut. This article is a revised version of a paper presented at

Reading Hurricane Katrina: Information Sources and Decision‐making in Response to a Natural Disaster

“…Decisions appeared to depend on input mediated by each individual's social network, and in particular the influence of key individuals often referred to as "opinion leaders." Alternate terms have been proposed during the decades since this model was first proposed, such as "advisors" (Black 1982), "early adopters" (Rogers 1983), and "influentials" (Wiemann 1991). These alternate terms, it has been argued, may better represent what actually occurs in the social network, since it is not clear whether there is always a true leader/follower dichotomy-but for purposes of this paper we will use the term "opinion leader" in order to emphasize the connection of our study to the existing literature using this concept.…”

Explicating Opinion Leadership: Nonpolitical Dispositions, Information Consumption, and Civic Participation

“…Indeed, our examination of the antecedents of opinion leadership showed that cultural, technical, and intellectual authority played a much more prominent role in self-assessments of opinion leadership than traditional markers of social and cultural authority such as age, gender, education, and income. These traits are critical to understanding the social roots of opinion leadership (Black, 1982;Richins & Root-Shafer, 1988) and explain a considerable amount of variance in the measure. It Downloaded by [UQ Library] at 00:17 21 November 2014 seems that individuals who view themselves as arbiters of style, innovations, or information serve as opinion leaders within their social networks, providing them with opportunities to influence others.…”

“…They are assumed to be self-assured, perceiving themselves as intelligent and independent enough to form personal judgments about public issues that they can then share with others (Chan & Misra, 1990). Studies in marketing and consumer behavior recognize these types of traits as preconditions for opinion leadership (Assael, 1987;Black, 1982;Richins & Root-Shafer, 1988;Solomon, 1999), yet research in political communication has not considered how traits such as sophistication, innovativeness, and assuredness work through opinion leadership to effect information seeking and civic participation. One reason for this gap may be challenges associated with measuring opinion leadership, both relationally and self-reflexively.…”

La diffusion internationale d’idées commerciales

“…Les sociopsychologues ont montré que le comportement des êtres humains est moins influencé par les médias qu'on ne le supposait et que les interrelations humaines sont des variables à prendre en considération (Mikl-Horke, 2005). Les leaders d'opinion sont également importants, comme ils transmettent les informations aux « suiveurs » potentiels ou influencent la décision d'adoption des autres par leurs actions (Black, 1982 ;Evans et Fill, 2000). À ce stade de notre exposé, il n'est pas clair si ces connaissances peuvent aussi s'appliquer à la diffusion d'idées commerciales.…”