Third International Conference on Communication & Media Studies

Abstract

As the mainstream media are forced to resort to models of integration to the new media to reach the mass audience it is becoming increasingly significant to investigate the ways the audience use new media. This paper analyzes the opinion leadership emerging in the social networks of Bangladesh through Facebook pages. The study is informed by the Two-Step Flow theory to understand the communication flow of social media opinion leadership. The linear flow of information in the two-step flow theory transforms to a non-linear, multi-step flow of communication and influence amongst the opinion leader and followers. The social implication of this extended role of the social media opinion leaders is further discussed in light of the theory of Networked Society which explains the flow of influence through a multimodal exchange of interactive messages from many to many in a horizontal communication network (Castells, 2007). Further, the page administrators were interviewed for a better understanding of their roles in formulating the communication strategies to run the page. A visual rhetoric analysis is conducted to analyze messages published by the sample Facebook page to examine the persuasion strategies, motivations and ideological characteristics of the opinion leader. The deconstruction of the messages contributes to the understanding of the dynamics of opinion leaderships, commonly sought persuasion strategies in memes spread through the Facebook page as well as the stages of development of the opinion leadership in order for the opinion leader to gain public acceptance.