Editing Two-step flow of communication (section)

== Published works on the theory ==
=== ''The People's Choice'' ===
The presidential election of 1940 saw President Franklin Roosevelt seek an unprecedented third term in office. Funded by grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, ''Life'' magazine, and the pollster [[Elmo Roper]], Columbia's Office of Radio Research conducted a study of voting. It was based on a panel study of 2,400 voters in Erie County, Ohio. Paul Lazarsfeld, [[Bernard Berelson]], and [[Hazel Gaudet]] supervised 15 interviewers, who from May–October interviewed the strategically selected 2,400 members of the community several different times in order to document their decision making process during the campaign. 

Lazarsfeld, Berelson, and Gaudet broke the respondents into groups of 600. Lazarsfeld and his team interviewed three groups once more following the initial interview. They interviewed the other group each month, May-November. The team used the monthly interview to monitor what media the people were consuming and if their voting decision changed. The study found that people were more likely to have conversations about politics with those around them than to consume political media. These conversations were more likely to sway voters than the political press was. Communication with community members seems reliable since the people are trusted. <ref>{{Cite book |last1=Woodward |first1=Gary C. |title=Persuasion and Influence in American Life |last2=Denton |first2=Robert E. |date=2019 |publisher=Waveland Press |isbn=978-1-4786-3612-0 |edition=8th |pages=93–94}}</ref>This observation led to the idea of the two-step flow theory.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Lazarsfeld |first1=Paul F. |title=The people's choice: how the voter makes up his mind in a presidential campaign |last2=Berelson |first2=Bernard |last3=Gaudet |first3=Hazel |date=2021 |publisher=Columbia University Press |isbn=978-0-231-19795-3 |edition=Legacy |location=New York}}</ref> 

They focused on what factors would influence their decisions as the campaign progressed. ''The People's Choice'', a book based on this study presented the theory of  "the two-step flow of communications", which later came to be associated with the so-called "limited effects model" of mass media: the idea that ideas often flow from radio and print to local "opinion leaders" who in turn pass them on to those with more limited political knowledge, or "opinion followers." The results of the research led to the conclusion that sometimes person to person communication can be more effective than traditional media outlets such as newspapers, TV, radio etc. This idea developed further in the book ''Personal Influence''.<ref>{{cite web|title=THE ERIE COUNTY STUDY (The People's Choice)|url=http://www.outofthequestion.org/Media-Research-of-the-1940s/Trends.aspx|work=Media Research of the 1940s}}</ref>

=== ''Personal Influence'' ===
In 1944, Paul Lazarsfeld contacted McFadden Publications in regards to his first book, ''The People's Choice''. The two collaborated forming a mutually beneficial partnership in which Macfadden saw a way to financially profit from advertising to the female population and Lazarsfeld saw a way to gain more information on social influence. Out of this came the study conducted by the Bureau of Applied Social Research in which 800 female residents of Decatur, Illinois, where interviewed through panel interviews to discover what and who primarily influenced their decision making. Lazarsfeld worked with Robert Merton and thus hired C. Wright Mills to head the study. Another part of the research team, [[Thelma Ehrlich]] Anderson, trained local Decatur women to administer surveys to targeted women in town. By 1955. the Decatur study was published as part of Elihu Katz and Lazarsfeld's book ''Personal Influence''. The book concluded that ultimately, face to face interaction is more influential than traditional media influence and thus confirmed the two-step flow model of communication.<ref>{{cite web|title=THE DECATUR COUNTY STUDY (Personal Influence)|url=http://www.outofthequestion.org/Media-Research-of-the-1940s/Trends.aspx|work=Media Research of the 1940s}}</ref>