Published 12/15/2024

Jacob Holland

If you voted in this past election, you may find it worthwhile to reflect on your
decision for who to vote for, and how you informed yourself. Traditionally, we have always
received our information from trusted news networks. These organizations put together
teams of professionals who dedicated their lives to journalism, and with it a standard of
integrity, so that we could depend on them as accurate sources of information. Over time,
we watched these news sources compromise on that integrity by prioritizing their profits,
concerned more with sensationalism than necessity or accuracy. Not only that, but the
multiplicity and variety of networks has far surpassed the attention span we’re capable of
giving. News went from being a public service to a commodity.

These issues have created such a need in the world of news and media where
individuals voluntarily navigate this convoluted space of conflicting facts, misinformation,
and spectacle. These individuals present themselves as “opinion leaders”, who we offer
our trust to and in return, we receive the fruits of their critically engaging with these news
networks. If you have ever listened to or watched Bill Maher, Rush Limbaugh, or Breitbart
then you have already consulted with an opinion leader. However, today’s generation is
more likely to encounter youtube personalities like Hasan Piker or Steven Crowder.

While it may seem like a trivial or tedious detail to analyze the concept of opinion
leaders, it is becoming increasingly important to understand because this is how younger
generations are approaching the political world more and more these days. The idea of an
opinion leader steams from the two-step model of communication which “argues that
information flows from mass media to opinion leaders and from them to a wider public”
(Oliver, 2019, p. 42). As communications media has rapidly developed from radio to
television, and now internet and its various expressions; the two-step model produces
multi-faceted and nuanced ideologies at a faster rate and more profound depth than ever
before. This is why the complexity of political views has escalated in mind boggling ways
compared to the Kennedy era. Even the Vietnam war had never polarized or divided the
country’s political views to the same extent that personalized algorithms of social media
and opinion leaders corresponding with such an apparatus have today.

So how did you decide who to vote for this election? Did you do your own research
into the issues, or were you happy to place your trust in a personality who seems well
informed and well intentioned? What we must necessarily learn from all this is the
importance of media literacy to best navigate the complicated structures of news in this
information age of mass communication. Understanding how opinion leaders fit in all of
this can not only help us in identifying how some might exploit this role, but also how we
can take advantage of this service. The difference lies in being able to critically analyze our
sources and be aware of what role they are serving in the world of news and media.

Works Cited:
Oliver, M. B., Raney, A. A., & Bryant, J. (Eds.). (2019). Media effects: Advances in theory
and research. Routledge.