Two-step flow of communication

A model of media influence in which mass-media messages reach opinion leaders, who interpret and relay them to other people through interpersonal communication.

Opinion leader: A person who influences others’ opinions through expertise, status, or social connections. Opinion leaders are the intermediaries who interpret media messages and pass them along.
The People's Choice: A 1944 study by Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet of voters during the 1940 U.S. presidential election. Its findings on interpersonal influence helped establish the model.
Hypodermic needle model: A model that portrays mass media as directly and powerfully injecting messages into passive audiences. It represents the direct-effects view that the two-step model challenged.
Two-step flow of agenda-setting: A process in which media agenda influence reaches some people through opinion leaders before spreading more broadly. It applies the model’s mediated pathway to judgments about issue importance.
Interpersonal communication: The exchange of information between people through direct social interaction. It carries the second stage of influence from opinion leaders to others.
Paul Lazarsfeld: An Austrian-American sociologist who pioneered empirical research on mass communication and public opinion. His election study supplied key evidence for the two-step account.
Multi-step flow model of communication: An account in which media influence travels through multiple interconnected social pathways rather than a fixed two-stage sequence. It generalizes the model to more complex, overlapping flows.
Political communication: The production and exchange of messages that shape political knowledge, attitudes, and behavior. Election research made political influence the model’s original testing ground.
Mass communication: The transmission of messages to large audiences through media channels. It supplies the messages that begin the model’s flow of influence.
Elihu Katz: An American sociologist of communication who developed influential research on media audiences and social influence. His collaboration with Lazarsfeld gave the model its canonical formulation.

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