How the Social Revolution Is to Be Managed

Abstract

We are in the middle of the social revolution! By using social media, on the one hand, social relationships develop between the users, who encounter each other on the same hierarchy level. On the other hand, opinion leader-opinion follower relationships are developed, which become established by the mutual creation, further development, and distribution of contents via social networks as well as via blogs and communities. The low barriers of entry when using social media—such as low costs, easy possibilities of uploading contents, and simple handling (high usability)—promote the sharing of them. At the same time, the classic opinion leaders (such as journalists and analysts) become less important even if their own loss in importance has still not become evident to them and they regard a commitment to social media as being partially less relevant (cf. Wüst, 2013, for current study results).