Personal Influence: The Part Played by People in the Flow of Mass Communications. By Elihu Katz and Paul F. Lazarsfeld. Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1955. 420 pp. $6.00

By R. E. Carter. 1956

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

Citations in the corpus

A Literature Review of Word of Mouth and Electronic Word of Mouth: Implications for Consumer Behavior (2017, background): “However, the many studies conducted (e.g., Katz and Lazarsfeld, 1966; Brown et al., 2007; Daugherty and Hoﬀman, 2014; Yang, 2017) agree that they are the media most able to inﬂuence consumer behavior and the most often used to obtain information before, during, and after consuming a given product…”
Posting, commenting, and tagging: Effects of sharing news stories on Facebook (2015, methodology): “The two-step flow model of communication (Katz & Lazarsfeld, 1955; Lazarsfeld, Berelson, & Gaudet, 1948) posits that news does not reach the majority of individuals directly from the mass media, but that the news first flows to opinion leaders and then from those opinion leaders to their networks.”
Expressive Versus Consumptive Blog Use: Implications for Interpersonal Discussion and Political Participation (2013, background): “Indeed, by virtue of their outward focus, people who express themselves online are likely to be the “gregarious” opinion leaders within their social networks, and opinion leadership has been linked to the formation of larger and more heterogeneous social networks (e.g., Katz & Lazarsfeld, 1955).”
Diffusion, Strategic Interaction, and Social Structure (2011, unknown): “Important work by Katz and Lazarsfeld (1955) (building on earlier studies of Lazarsfeld, Berelson, and Gaudet (1944), Merton (1948), and others), identifies the role of “opinion leaders” in the formation of various beliefs and opinions.”
Determinants of consumer engagement in electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) in social networking sites (2011, background): “WOM is defined as the act of exchanging marketing information among consumers, and plays an essential role in changing consumer attitudes and behaviour towards products and services (Katz & Lazarsfeld 1955).”
Influentials, Networks, and Public Opinion Formation (2007, background): “Because information, and thereby influence “flows” from the media through opinion leaders to their respective followers, Katz and Lazarsfeld (1955) called their model the “two-step flow” of communication, in contrast with the then paradigmatic one-step, or “hypodermic,” model that treated…”
Norm Perception as a Vehicle for Social Change (2016, background): “In this literature, influential individuals are the early adopters of new ideas and practices, adopting them from sources such as the mass media and propagating them throughout their social network via personal endorsements (Katz & Lazarsfeld, 1955; Rogers, 1962).”