Katz E. (1957) The Two-Step Flow of Communication: An Up-To-Date Report on a Hypothesis. Political Opinion Quarterly, 21 (1), 61-78 http://dx.doi.org/10/1086/266687 accessed 2/3/2015

Teaching is a natural dichotic leader/follower relationship, and this has lead me to consider the two-step flow theory within the backdrop of Pinterest.

The ‘Two Step Flow of Communication’ hypothesis states that “ideas flow from radio and print to opinion leaders and from these to the less active sections of the population” This means that rather than the whole audience gaining influence from the media in equal amounts, the audience can be seen in multiple levels of exposure to the mass media, where those who have the most exposure pass on their understanding of the media to other members of an audience through a system of networks.

How is this relevant to Pinterest? –

The hypothesis suggested that “people were still most successfully persuaded by give-and-take with other people”, and that the audience was “networks of interconnected individuals through which mass communications are channeled.”,  As a social media Pinterest works through individuals and businesses wanting to store and share visual information. Networks of users ‘follow’ other users in a complicated web of influence.

The original hypothesis was based around a voting study in 1940 in America. The study had three findings, so how can these relate to Pinterest and using Pinterest in the FE classroom

1. Personal influence has an impact on peoples opinions– rather than just an impact from the mass media. A teacher aims to have a significant impact on their students, guiding them through re-presenting information in the context of a learning journey.
2. The personal influence flows from certain members of the audience (“opinion leaders”) who were more connected to the mass media to those who are not. Teachers at FE level generally have more experience of their subject matter than the students, and a repertoire of sources for research from diverse areas of the mass media.
3. The relationship between opinion leaders and the mass media is more extensive than that of the rest of the population. FE students have, through their level of learning and their age, a smaller cultural capital. From my experience, even those who are interested in the media and the arts do not have a deep enough knowledge of the subject area to know where to start their research or how to turn this research into anything meaningful.

Using Pinterest allows me to be a self-designated opinion leader with my students being just some of my ‘followers’ by actively linking to my ‘board’. Katz, observes that opinion leaders are “influential at certain times and with respect to certain substantive areas by virtue of the fact that he is ’empowered’ to be so by other members of his group”, making me think about how teaching is empowered by students, that is is a symbiotic relationship.

In studying how doctors decide to adopt new drugs into their medical practice Katz, reports that the study focused on  “(1) a specific item, (2) diffusion over time (3) through the social structure of an entire community.” for me the item is Pinterest, the time frame is Sept 2014 – May 2015 and the community is my learning community.

Katz states it is important to consider not only at the main relationships within the group, also the “entire web of potentially relevant relationships”. For a study to be successful Katz suggests an investigation into “why integration is related to innovation”, concluding that a deeper integration into the wider relevant community (for me – the art, design and media community) allowed the opinion leaders to be “more in touch and more up to date” and therefore “feel more secure when facing the risks of innovation”. This is personally interesting as I have already identified that one of the reasons I like to use Pinterest is to keep up with trends and changes in the wider industry.

Katz, considers “The Various Roles of the Media”, and concludes that there is a distinction between “media that ‘inform’ and media that ‘legitimate’ decisions. I would speculate that Pinterest has more of an informing role for the students and a legitimising function for me. Where Pinterest is a primary media for many of the students, as they have not seen the visual ‘pin’ in any other location, whereas I am using Pinterest more as a secondary media to legitimise information through curating a collection to communicate a direction for their research.

Through consideration of the two-step flow communication model, within an ethnographic study there are a few objectives that could be considered =

• Explore the relationship between myself and my students, perhaps classifying them into specific groups based on behaviour patterns.
• Explore how these relationships might differ compared to those between myself and non student followers.
• Explore how the online Pinterest relationship transfers into a classroom based, teacher/student relationship.
• Explore the online relationship students have with me compared to others that they might ‘follow’ as other opinion leaders. Particularly as many of them follow each other.
• Explore how the position of opinion leader might affect my performance as a teacher.

One potential negative identified by Katz is that “interpersonal relations are also sources of pressure to conform to the group’s way of thinking and acting as well as sources of social support”, therefore, it is important to consider the negative aspects of using this technology in the classroom as well as the perceived benefits.