Construct · 6 names · 10 citations
Different names. Different fields. One construct. One map.
● jangle · six names, one contested construct Nearest construct by meaninginfluencecompare the meaningsEvery construct on the map is compared with every other by the meaning of its definitions, and the closest one is surfaced here. The nearest construct to opinion leadership is influence.
Hold this as a prompt, not a verdict. Two constructs sitting close in meaning is a reason to read them side by side and decide for yourself whether they are one idea under two names. It is not proof that they are. Compare the meanings in the Collider.
Spokes are the names and the models that coined them; dashed arcs are borrowings. Tap a field for its definition, unit, and measures.
Drag to watch the word get claimed. Each name appears at the publication date of the earliest source cited for it. Tap a year to see which.
A person to whom others turn for advice and information on a topic, and through whom mass-media content reaches the less attentive, the hypothesis that ideas flow from radio and print to opinion leaders and from them to the rest of the population. Lazarsfeld's Erie County voting study proposed it in 1944; Katz and Lazarsfeld's Decatur study tested it in 1955 for marketing, fashion, film-going, and public affairs. Opinion leaders were found in every stratum, distinguished by conversation rather than by status. Katz's 1957 review fixed the three markers: who one is, what one knows, and whom one knows. The influence is face-to-face and the leader is identified by being named or by naming themselves.[1][2]
The degree to which an individual is able informally to influence other individuals' attitudes or overt behaviour in a desired way with relative frequency, Rogers's definition, and the one most later scales paraphrase. Rogers and Cartano compared the three ways of finding such people in 1962: sociometric nomination, key-informant ratings, and self-designation, and found them only moderately correlated. Rogers separated the opinion leader, a member of the system who is influential because of conformity to its norms, from the change agent, an outsider who tries to influence adoption on behalf of an agency and who works through opinion leaders. The leader is inside the system; the change agent is paid to enter it.[3][4]
A self-reported trait, scored on a short Likert scale about how often one talks about a product category, gives information, and is asked for advice. Childers's 1986 revision of the King and Summers scale made it psychometrically respectable and product-specific. Feick and Price then argued in 1987 that a different person also exists: the market maven, who has information about many products, shops, and prices and initiates conversations about them, without being an expert in any one category. The maven differs from the opinion leader by breadth and from the innovator by not necessarily buying first. Both are measured by asking the person about themselves.[5][6]
A position in a graph rather than a trait of a person. Freeman's 1978 clarification defined three centralities (degree, betweenness, and closeness) as three distinct ideas of what it means to be central, and warned they identify different people. Burt argued in 1999 that opinion leaders are more precisely opinion brokers: people whose ties span the structural holes between groups, so that information crosses from one group to another through them. The leader on this account need not be prominent in any group, only between them. Influence is a property of where the ties are, and it is measured from the sociogram without asking anyone whether they are influential.[8][9]
Members of a community recruited and trained to promote a behaviour change (condom use, smoking cessation, guideline adherence among physicians) because their peers already listen to them. Valente and Pumpuang's 2007 review catalogued ten ways of identifying them, from celebrity and self-selection through staff selection, positional approach, and snowball sampling to sociometric nomination and expert identification, and found that programmes rarely say which one they used or whether it mattered. The construct is defined here by what the leader is used for, and the identification method is treated as a design choice with consequences for the intervention's effect.[10]
Next
Combine items across the opinion leadership scales to see whether the meanings separate empirically, or export every reference on this page in one click.
Open in ColliderExport BibTeXReport this collisionCited on this page?
If your work is cited behind one of these entries, you know better than we do whether we captured the meaning right. Confirm it, suggest an edit, or dispute it, and your name goes on the entry as an author who has checked it, linked to your ORCID.
Claim your construct
Social media & public relations
an independent third-party endorser who shapes audience attitudes through blogs, tweets, and other social media.An independent third-party endorser who shapes audience attitudes through blogs, tweets, and other social media, Freberg, Graham, McGaughey, and Freberg's 2011 definition, one of the first in the academic literature. Influence here is inferred from reach: follower counts, engagement, and perceived personality, not from anyone naming the person as a source of advice. The influencer broadcasts to strangers and is often paid to do so, which makes them closer to Rogers's change agent than to his opinion leader, though the industry uses the older term. What differs from every other name on the map is the direction of the tie: the audience follows the influencer, the influencer does not know the audience.[7]