Research into persuasion has shown that the media can be very effective in teaching factual material, but when you try to convince anyone of anything, different people often have different reactions to the same material. What is effective for one person is not necessarily effective for other people. Some of the classic studies of persuasion were done by Carl Hovland in his Why we fight studies of the American soldier, and after the war at Yale.

Comparisons between the mass media and interpersonal communication suggest that although the mass media are effective because they reach lots of people, interpersonal communication is often more effective. Two of the classic studies in this area are Everett Rogers' studies of the Diffusion of innovations and Katz and Lazarsfeld's studies of the "two-step flow" . The results of these studies suggest that the similarity and degree of closeness between the communicators is an important part of successful persuasion.

Some of my own research suggests that celebrities have the ability to rearch people through the sort of pseudo intimacy or similarity that has been called "para-social" identification. When several attempts are made to persuade someone, that is called a campaign.

Return to Mike Basil's homepage