The Influence of Opinion Leadership,
Followership, and Curatorship on
Mass Media Connections and
Political Participation
Joo-Young Jung, International Christian University
Yong-Chan Kim, Yonsei University
Opinion Leadership
“The degree to which an individual is able to
influence informally other individuals’ attitudes or
overt behavior in a desired way with relative
frequency” (Rogers, 1983, p.331).
“[O]pinion leaders tend to be both more generally
exposed to the mass media, and more
specifically exposed to the content most closely
associated with their leadership” (Katz &
Lazarsfeld, 1955, p.316).
Opinion Followership
Influenced by opinion leaders and regard
opinions of friends and family as more credible
than media messages (Katz & Lazarsfeld, 1955,
Lee, 2010)
Less connected to the mass media (Flynn,
Goldsmith & Eastman, 1996; Shoham & Ruvio,
2008)
Opinion Curatorship
Diversified news sources and channels
More flexible and broader social networks
Opinion curatorship involves more active and
selective process.
Critical and selective opinion collecting and
networked opinion sharing
Research Methods
Data: Online survey data (n=598) collected in
October, 2014 in Seoul, Korea.
Sampling: Quota sampling considering residency
(25 districts in Seoul) and age.
20s (20.7%), 30s (27.3%), 40s (27.8%), 50s and
over (24.2%)
Hypotheses &
Research Questions
RQ1: Are political opinion leadership,
followership and curatorship distinct constructs?
Measures
Political opinion leadership: Six Likert scale (5-point)
items (Katz & Lazarsfeld, 1955; Flynn et al., 1996)
Political opinion followership: Six Likert scale (5-point)
items (Flynn et al., 1996)
Political opinion curatorship: Ten Likert scale (5-point)
items (Kelly, 1988 & focus group discussion)
Results
Principal component analysis
Four factors identified:
opinion leadership (reliability alpha = .914)
opinion followership (alpha = .894)
critical opinion curatorship (alpha = .798)
networked opinion curatorship (alpha = .845)
Hypotheses:
Socioeconomic status
H1-1: Political opinion leaders are likely to have
higher socioeconomic status than others.
H1-2: Political opinion followers are likely to have
lower socioeconomic status than others.
RQ2: Do political opinion curators have higher or
lower socioeconomic status than others?
Result
Hypothesis: media
connections
H2: Political opinion leaders and curators are
more likely to be connected to the mass media
for political information than opinion followers.
(Carah, 2014; Katz & Lazarsfeld, 1955; Quan-
Haase & Martin, 2013; Rhee et al., 2007)
Result: Media connections
Offline
newspap
ers
Televisio
n
Radio Magazine
s
Online
news
Portal
sites
Online
video
O.L. .108* .146** .136*
O.F. .131** .172**
C.C. .106* .115* .125* .147** .165**
N.C. .126* .203** .127*
R2 .072 .090 .046 .120 .035 .066 .082
F 6.31** 7.69** 4.27** 10.26** 3.474** 5.79** 7.06**
Note: *: p < .05, **: p < .01
Controlled for income, education, age, gender and political interest
Hypotheses: Interpersonal talk
and political participation
RQ3: Are political opinion leaders, followers and curators more
likely to engage in interpersonal political talk than others? (Katz
& Lazarsfeld, 1955)
H3: Political opinion leaders and curators are more likely to
participate in political activities on SNSs than political opinion
followers (Rhee et al., 2007) .
H4: Political opinion leaders and curators are more likely to
engage in offline political activities than political opinion
followers (Scheufele & Shah, 2000).
Result
Interpersonal political
talk
SNS political
participation
Offline political
participation
O.L. .222** .302** .137**
O.F. .060 .076 .080
C.C. -.012 -.040 .157**
N.C. .068 .176** .127*
R2 .482 .313 .165
F 64.28** 31.94** 14.423**
Note: *: p < .05, **: p < .01
Controlled for income, education, age, gender and political interest
Implications and Future
ResearchCritical curatorship and networked curatorship as new
concepts that go beyond opinion
leadership/followership
Further analyses of opinion curatorship
Networked opinion curatorship and opinion
leadership
Political knowledge and opinion tendencies
Opinion leaders seeking for more specific media?
Implications of the result
Critical curatorship and networked curatorship as new concepts
that go beyond opinion leadership/followership
Critical curators: higher income, older, widely connected to the
mass media, offline political participation
Networked curators: higher income, older, specific contents,
SNS and offline political participation
Opinion leaders are likely to participate in online and offline
political activities and interpersonal talk but not so much
connected to the mass media
Measures
Media connections (5-point “helpfulness” scale)
Nine types of media
Scope of media connectedness (range: 0-9)
Interpersonal political talk
“How often do you talk with others about
politics?” (1: do not talk at all --- 7: talk all the
time)
Measures
SNS political participation: 7 activities (7-point
frequency of participation scale)
Offline political participation: 8 activities (yes or no)
Control variables: political interest, income, education,
age and gender