Influence of Media on Individuals: Step Flow Model

The 💥step flow model accurately describes how people are influenced by the media. Evaluate this view.

Key focus of the question:
Sociological attempts to explain media effects provide the underpinnings for this question. The 💥step flow model was developed by Katz and Lazarsfeld to explain how personal relationships and conversations with significant others, such as family and friends, result in people modifying or rejecting media messages. Opinion leaders are exposed to different types of media and form an interpretation of that content. They then influence others in a social network. Good answers are likely to evaluate the 💥step flow model by drawing contrasts with other models of media effects such as uses and gratifications, reception analysis, and cultural effects. Evidence from studies may also be used to support arguments for and against the 💥step flow model.

Indicative content

For:
💥 The general idea that audiences are not passive and that effects are dependent on audiences’ relations with others is now widely accepted.
💥 The 💥step flow model highlighted the limitations in the hypodermic💥syringe model, which had wrongly assumed that audiences are passive and are all affected in the same way.
💥 The hypodermic💥syringe model also assumes the audience is an ‘atomised mass’ whose response to media messages is unaffected by their social relations with others.
💥 The 💥step flow model was the first to emphasize that media consumption is often a group experience and that relations between members in the group should be studied in order to understand how media messages are interpreted.
💥 The model also introduced the idea that opinion leaders may be more significant than the media in influencing how media messages are received. This led to a questioning of ideas about mass society and the notion that the media had become an all💥powerful force controlling the way people think and behave.
💥 The 💥step flow model laid the foundations for more sophisticated research and theorizing about how audiences relate to and use the media, including the uses and gratifications model and the reception analysis model.

Against:
💥 The 💥step flow model is rather simplistic because audience members may or may not discuss what they see, read or hear with others and, even if they do discuss some messages, many messages will go undiscussed.
💥 By focusing on the key role of opinion leaders, the model underestimates the power of the media to directly or indirectly influence audiences.

Belief that the media can have a powerful and relatively immediate effect in influencing audiences has encouraged companies to spend huge sums on advertising. Likewise, government regulations to restrict access to certain media content, particularly in the case of children, also imply a belief that the media can be an invasive influence.
The reception analysis model suggests that all individuals interpret what they see, hear or read in the media according to their pre💥existing views, attitudes, and opinions. Opinion leaders have little impact on this process.
The cultural effects model claims that the media can have significant effects on attitudes and behavior. These effects come about indirectly and through long💥term exposure to media content; the short💥term impact of consuming media content is very limited.
It is not easy to prove or disprove whether opinion leaders play a key role in the way media messages are interpreted because of the difficulty of separating relevant variables and measuring the precise effects of media exposure.
The 💥step flow model lacks an analysis of why people would be influenced by opinion leaders and how far this resulted in people interpreting media messages in ways that differed significantly from the intentions of those who produced the media content.