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