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Influencers: Person-to-Person Influence in the Networked Era

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Communication Theory for Humans

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Abstract

This chapter approaches human communicators as influencers and traces a line from mid-twentieth century studies of ‘opinion leaders’ right up to present-day social media influencers. It begins by examining the early work of Elihu Katz and Paul Lazarsfeld, which suggested that opinion leaders act as intermediaries between media and their audiences (what became known as the two-step flow theory). It then explores the workings of celebrity influence and how celebrity itself has transformed over time. In particular, it describes how the emergence of reality television ushered in a new phase of celebrity marked by the increasing visibility of ‘ordinary’ people. Chapter 6 concludes by examining recent research on social media influencers and highlights a number of factors that putatively explain why such individuals are influential.

People influence people. Nothing influences people more than a recommendation from a trusted friend.

—Mark Zuckerberg, in Schonfeld (2007)

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Notes

  1. 1.

    It is important to stress here that unlike Mead, Herbert Blumer did in fact study the media—particularly in his earlier work. Indeed, he observed—long before the emergence of the internet—that all ‘channels and forms of communication are intertwined in a vast communicative process’ (1998[1969]: 185). In typical Blumer fashion, these words are contained in a scathing critique of media scholars who conduct studies of individual mediums and make bold claims about their particular ‘effects’. Such studies, he insists, ignore what actually occurs in the ‘real world’: ‘In a political campaign the various media are participating in a total evolving process, treating to a large extent the same events and responding to one another’s presentations. What they present is filtered and organised in diverse ways in the experience of people, with much of it picked up and used in the arena of local communication. This intertwined, interacting, and transforming make-up of the communicative process stands in noticeable contrast to a scheme wherein each form or channel of communication is regarded as exercising a distinct influence that can be kept separate and measured in some parallelogram of forces’ (1998[1969]: 187). Blumer’s words were written long before the emergence of digital media and theorisations of ‘media convergence’ (Jenkins 2006) and the ‘media manifold’ (Couldry and Hepp 2017), yet his instincts about a ‘total evolving process’ appear rather prescient.

  2. 2.

    Readers might be familiar with the ‘magic bullet’ and ‘hypodermic needle’ metaphors of mass communication, which are simply other ways of expressing the view that the contents of media pass straight into us—that is, like a bullet from a gun or a needle piercing our skin.

  3. 3.

    ‘The evidence strongly suggests that opinions and attitudes often are maintained, sometimes generated, sometimes merely enforced, in conjunction with others. In short, we have attempted to marshal evidence for our contention that the individual expression of opinions and attitudes is not strictly an individual affair’ (Katz and Lazarsfeld (2017[1955]: 65).

  4. 4.

    Katz points out that ‘persuasion’ is not the only form of influence. For example, in the case of manipulation, the influential is aware, while his or her victim is not, while in the case of imitation, ‘the reverse is true—that is, the influencee may be aware of having been influenced, while the influential may be innocently unaware’ (2017[1955]: xxi).

  5. 5.

    In other words, the process can only be deemed successful if in the final instance consumers understand the intended meanings and ‘take possession’ of them in creating their own identities (1989: 314). For example, since partnering with singer Ariana Grande in 2017, the athletic brand Reebok has attempted to attract younger consumers, including those who identify as ‘Arianators’ (fans of Ariana Grande). In a release announcing the partnership, Grande said, ‘Like Reebok, I fiercely stand for those who express themselves, celebrate their individuality and push boundaries. I’m an advocate for people accepting themselves for who they are. Reebok’s message of enabling and encouraging self-belief and self-betterment is something I fundamentally live by’ (Chung 2017). McCracken’s cultural transfer model tells us that the Reebok-Grande partnership can only be deemed successful if young audiences understand and identify with its central message of empowerment, individuality, and self-belief.

  6. 6.

    Relatedly, a person’s ‘Klout score’ (rated from 1 to 100) is a measurement of their online social influence and includes such things as their number of followers, shares, mentions, and so on (see Pang and Ng 2017).

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  1. Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland

    Neil O’Boyle

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O’Boyle, N. (2022). Influencers: Person-to-Person Influence in the Networked Era. In: Communication Theory for Humans. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-02450-4_6

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