From “I know a guy” to “just Google it”: �How online opinion leadership affects our sense of community

Pranaav Jadhav

Ph.D. (First year)

School of Journalism and Media

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Nick Geidner

Pranaav Jadhav

Joel Moroney

Kathryn Fellhoelter

46^th Annual CCI Research Symposium

STUDENT RESEARCH STARS

Introduction

• The way we get and consume information has changed.
• Information available with a few clicks or taps
• Rapid access to knowledge is positive but has limitations
• Disinformation
• Do we need opinion leaders?
• Relationship with community
• Internet reduces need to seek opinion leaders in community

Literature review

• Humans began by developing small groups for protection. As we grew, these became societies, legislative systems (Hobbes, 1651/1996; Locke, 1689/1980)
• Social capital (Bourdieu, 1986)
• Value through connections.
• In these cases, we use to to rely on trusted opinion leaders within our community to gain the information we need (see Berelson, Lazarsfeld, & McPhee, 1954; Katz & Lazarsfeld, 1955). Now, we can turn to Google to answer them all.

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This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY

Hypotheses

Reliance on online opinion leaders removes one of the key values we gain from our modern communities.

H1:Individuals, who are primed to think about online opinion leaders, will have less connection to their community than individuals, who are primed to think about location-based opinion leaders

Hypotheses (contd)

• Local news organizations also provide a wealth of information and are part of the storytelling networks of our community (Kim & Ball-Rokeach, 2006).
• H2:Individuals, who are exposed to a national news story, will have less connection to their community than individuals, who are exposed to a local news story.
• •H3: A moderating relationship between the two independent variables will result in the effects of local news exposure on the outcome variables will not be as strong in individuals, who rely on location-based opinion leaders, when compared to individuals, who rely on online opinion leaders.

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Methodology

• Experiment using a 2x2 between-subjects design
• Convenience sample of undergraduate journalism and communication students at a large Southern university
• Comprised of a pre-stimulus questionnaire, a priming task, a news story, and a post-stimulus questionnaire.
• Participant will be randomly assigned to either the location-based opinion leader or the online opinion leader condition.
• In both conditions, we will be using a simple task to prime the participants to think about the targeted opinion leaders

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Methodology (contd)

• In location-based condition, participant will be asked to enter the initials of the person in their social network that they would go to for each of three specific pieces of information.
• The only difference in the online opinion leader condition is that the participant will be asked to list the website they would go to for each piece of information. 
• After completing the priming task, the participant will again be randomly assigned to one of two conditions (i.e., local news exposure or national news exposure).
• The participant will be asked to read a short news story about changes to FAFSA submission process.
• In the local news condition, the participant will be asked to read a “local news story” and the sources referenced in the article will represent local sources, in the national news exposure condition, the article will be referred to as a “national news story” and the sources will be non-local sources. Everything else in the article will be identical.
• Participant will complete a post-stimulus questionnaire, containing items related to individuals’ connection to their community.
• Specifically, the questionnaire will include previously validated measures of bridging and bonding social capital, community satisfaction, and generalized trust.

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Expected analysis

• The data collected from the online experiment will be analyzed using ANCOVA models in SPSS.
• We will run individual models for each outcome variable (bridging and bonding social capital, community satisfaction, and generalized trust).
• In all models, source of opinion leadership and source of news will serve as the dependent variables.
• Demographic variables, media use, and items having to do with the individuals’ history with the community will be treated as control variables in the model.
• We expect the findings will demonstrate that relying on online opinion leaders (or being primed to think about online opinion leaders) negatively affects individuals’ connection to their community (as measured by social capital, community satisfaction, and generalized trust). We also expect to see that local news can serve as proxy for local opinion leaders and enhance individuals’ connection to the community, even in individuals in the online opinion leader condition.
• We hope this research can add to our understanding of the ways in which the Internet is shaping our society and underscore the importance of local news in shaping our community.

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Thank you!