Audience Theories (The Two Step Flow Theory)

Katz and Lazarsfeld assumes a slightly more active audience and suggests that messages from the media move in two distinct ways. First, individuals who are opinion leaders, receive messages from the media and pass on their own interpretations in addition to the actual media content.

The information does not flow directly from the text into the minds of its audience, but is filtered through its opinion leaders who then pass it in to a more passive audience. The audience then mediate the information received directly from the media with the ideas and thoughts expressed by the opinion leaders, thus being influenced not by a direct process, but, by a two step flow.

This theory appeared to reduce the power of the media. and some researchers concluded that social factors were also important in the way in which audiences interpret texts. This then led to the idea of active audiences.