The communicator and the audience

1 Revision of a paper delivered at the tenth anniversary of the founding of the Department and Laboratory of Social Relations, Harvard University, February 9, 1957. sumptions about the direct impact of the mass media upon the mass audience. The idea of the two-step flow of communications was introduced, and this initiated a search for opinion leaders. But opinion leadrs proved not to be a single class of persons all of whom exercised their influence in the