There is always the suspicion that when you stumble upon an insight from a different discipline to your own, you wonder whether it is something that is actually common knowledge and you’re arriving a little late to the party…That’s how I felt when I suddenly realised there was a whole body of literature dedicated to communication theories. But I was also excited as it opened up new ways of looking at dealing with online customers and communities as well as confirming the importance of identifying the key players in the communications process.
So, if you are like me and new to this area, read on for a quick overview of something that should be familiar to those working in PR but maybe less so to the rest of us.
Communications Theory 101
My journey started when I was reading an unrelated article about the US political writer Russell Kirk and I came across the following paragraph:
“Downs followed an hypothesis of Elmo Roper, which held that great ideas emerge from a small group of “great thinkers” and are then brought to public awareness by the efforts of five concentric groups: “Great disciples” (learned individuals who do not themselves originate the ideas) place the ideas before the “great disseminators” (often teachers and journalists), who are followed by “lesser disseminators,” the “politically active,” and finally the “politically inert.”’Following Roper’s theory of communications, Kirk belongs among the “great disciples” who at a high level of articulation begin the work of dissemination.”
Despite the political framework of the paragraph above this is perhaps something that many of us instinctively know but haven’t really considered in such a formal way. It led me to go off and see whether I could discover more about Roper’s work or about communication theories in general.
It’s a generalization but communication theories up to roughly around the 1940s saw communication as being something that was unmediated between communicator and audience.The main theories either stated (broadly speaking) that people understand messages in a like manner or that they respond according to their circumstances to the time. In the latter case, this led to the following formula:
- “Some kinds of communication on some kinds of issues, brought to the attention of some kinds of people under some kinds of conditions, have some kinds of effects”
The point about these theories though is that (to quote Margaret Thatcher out of context), “there is no such thing as society” - the relationship between disseminator and audience is a one-to-one relationship.
However, work by people like Lazarsfeld and Roper stressed the importance of mediating influences in the reception of the message.
Roper’s example illustrated above is what is known as the concentric circle theory and Lazarsfeld’s theory is a variant known as the Two-Step Flow of Communication Theory. In Roper’s structure, you can see the importance given to ‘trusted’ disseminators at various stages of the propogation of the message - these might be teachers, journalists or, at a lower level, trusted ‘local’ experts or activists.
Chains of Coomunication and Influence
I find this fascinating for a number of reasons. Firstly, it fits in very well with the whole way we can see user-generated content influencing decisions on the web. Indeed, Vicky’s recent post on the Six Degrees of Separation is a simplified variant of Roper’s structure above - she cites influencers, connectors , endorsers for example.
Roper’s model I also find interesting because of the role of the ‘lesser’ communicators in the structure - we all know that mammoth blogs can make the running in terms of thought but Roper’s model also seems to imply that there is room for the ‘little guy’ as well. As an suspect, I guess there is pobably a tipping point in a blog’s existence where it either splits or becomes so rowdy that people leave anyway - which is where the smaller blogs pick up the ‘fallout.’
I also find this interesting because I think it might not be a long tail model either. The communication theories cited above are mass communication theories and this might suggest that while a recommendation to visit a destination by a trusted blogger will affect decision at a micro-level, it could also be contributing to a larger macro level picture over time.
What’s this got to do with Tourism?
In conclusion, it is probably good to raise the perennial question of this site: “what’s this got to do with tourism?” Well, it confirms the importance of the intermediaries identified in other posts - a mass information campaign can raise awareness but personal views can shape the final decisions. I think it also stresses the importance of identifying who those influencers are - potentially a hard slog in some cases (and we speak from experience!) but ultimately delivering considerable bang for your buck.
Much of this post was inspired by some good entry level documents I found at Wesleyan University-Philippines Mass Communication e-Classroom.
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This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 31st, 2007 at 10:25 am and is filed under Social media measurement. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.