The Two-Step Flow of Communication hypothesis can be best explained visually than to be written, essentially, the hypothesis was created by Katz and Lazarsfeld during 1944's presidential election campaign, they hypothesised that on observation the general public would be more likely to vote for a presidential candidate after hearing from them, themselves through the mass media, at that time such as Radio and Print magazine. On contrary to their belief, both Katz and Lazarsfeld experience that this wasn't the case with most voters making their decision on who to vote for from impersonal contacts influencing their voting behaviour than exposure to radio or newspaper sources. Armed with this data, both of decided to created the two-step flow model of communication;The theory suggests that from the media flows through two distinct stages, the first stage of the flow is that influencers who pay close attention to the media (For my argument, social media 'influencers') will receive the message that the mass media is carrying, from there the opinion leaders pass on their own interpretations in addition to the mass media content and feed this through to their followers. Opinion leaders can be quite influential in terms of getting people to change their attitudes or behaviours to fit that of themselves therefore in regards to my own research into if marketing collaborations between influencers and brands are worth it, this theory would fully support the argument, that yes it would be. The two-step flow model has given the ability to refine and predict the influence of media messages and cultural behaviour, therefore if an example of an icon of our generation such as Kim Kardashian being able to influence her users by endorsing a product such as vitamins, the assumption would be that those who follow her, will be influenced to buy the product.
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