IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/anname/v566y1999i1p37-54.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Social Capital of Opinion Leaders

Author

Listed:
  • Ronald S. Burt

    (University of Chicago)

Abstract

Opinion leaders are more precisely opinion brokers who carry information across the social boundaries between groups. They are not people at the top of things so much as people at the edge of things, not leaders within groups so much as brokers between groups. The familiar two-step flow of communication is a compound of two very different network mechanisms: contagion by cohesion through opinion leaders gets information into a group, and contagion by equivalence generates adoptions within the group. Opinion leaders as brokers bear a striking resemblance to network entrepreneurs in social capital research. The complementary content of diffusion and social capital research makes the analogy productive. Diffusion research describes how opinion leaders play their role of brokering information between groups, and social capital research describes the benefits that accrue to brokers.

Suggested Citation

  • Ronald S. Burt, 1999. "The Social Capital of Opinion Leaders," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 566(1), pages 37-54, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:anname:v:566:y:1999:i:1:p:37-54
    DOI: 10.1177/000271629956600104
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/000271629956600104
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/000271629956600104?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Frenzen, Jonathan K & Davis, Harry L, 1990. "Purchasing Behavior in Embedded Markets," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 17(1), pages 1-12, June.
    2. Flynn, Leisa Reinecke & Goldsmith, Ronald E. & Eastman, Jacqueline K., 1994. "The King and Summers opinion leadership scale: Revision and refinement," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 55-64, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ibiso Isoboye Damieibi & Isoboye Jacob Damieibi, 2023. "Impact of Networking on Resources Sharing in Rivers State University, Port Harcourt, Nigeria," International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science, International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS), vol. 7(5), pages 1229-1248, May.
    2. Yali Zhang & Haixin Zhang & Zhaojun Yang & Jun Sun & Chrissie Diane Tan, 2019. "Snowball Effect of User Participation in Online Environmental Communities: Elaboration Likelihood under Social Influence," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(17), pages 1-15, September.
    3. Sangmi Chai & Bomi Choi & Minkyun Kim & T. C. E. Cheng, 2023. "Why do people speak about products online? The role of opinion leadership," Information Technology and Management, Springer, vol. 24(1), pages 1-17, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gabbay, Shaul M. & Leenders, Roger Th.A.J., 2002. "A perceptional view of the Coleman model of trust," Research Report 02B32, University of Groningen, Research Institute SOM (Systems, Organisations and Management).
    2. Roland Pongou & Roberto Serrano, 2009. "A Dynamic Theory of Fidelity Networks with an Application to the Spread of HIV/AIDS," Working Papers 2009-2, Brown University, Department of Economics.
    3. Hinz, Oliver & Schulze, Christian & Takac, Carsten, 2014. "New product adoption in social networks: Why direction matters," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 67(1), pages 2836-2844.
    4. Shih-Ping Jeng, 2008. "Effects of corporate reputations, relationships and competing suppliers' marketing programmes on customers' cross-buying intentions," The Service Industries Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(1), pages 15-26, January.
    5. Kreuzer, Maria & Mühlbacher, Hans & von Wallpach, Sylvia, 2018. "Home in the re-making: Immigrants' transcultural experiencing of home," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 334-341.
    6. Adelman, Mara B. & Ahuvia, Aaron C., 1995. "Social support in the service sector : The antecedents, processes, and outcomes of social support in an introductory service," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 273-282, March.
    7. Fereshteh Ghazizadeh Ehsaei, 2012. "Acceptance of Feedbacks in Reputation Systems: The Role of Online Social Interactions," Information Management and Business Review, AMH International, vol. 4(7), pages 391-401.
    8. Weihe Gao & Yong Liu & Liping Qian, 2016. "The personal touch of business relationship: A study of the determinants and impact of business friendship," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 33(2), pages 469-498, June.
    9. Sammon, Rachel & Kwon, Kyoung-Nan, 2015. "Host׳s interpersonal influence on guests in a home sales party," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 23(C), pages 32-38.
    10. repec:dgr:rugsom:02b32 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Raghuram Iyengar & Christophe Van den Bulte & Thomas W. Valente, 2011. "Opinion Leadership and Social Contagion in New Product Diffusion," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 30(2), pages 195-212, 03-04.
    12. Jungyi Park & Sunghyup Sean Hyun, 2021. "Influence of Airline Cabin Crew Members’ Rapport-Building Behaviors and Empathy toward Colleagues on Team Performance, Organizational Atmosphere, and Irregularity," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(12), pages 1-23, June.
    13. Qi Wang & Yunxia Mao & Ji Zhu & Xiaohang Zhang, 2018. "Receiver responses to referral reward programs in social networks," Electronic Commerce Research, Springer, vol. 18(3), pages 563-585, September.
    14. Zhang, Honghong & Fam, Kim-Shyan & Goh, Tiong-Thye & Dai, Xin, 2018. "When are influentials equally influenceable? The strength of strong ties in new product adoption," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 160-170.
    15. Hoffmann, Stefan & Soyez, Katja, 2010. "A cognitive model to predict domain-specific consumer innovativeness," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 63(7), pages 778-785, July.
    16. Schneider, John A. & Zhou, A. Ning & Laumann, Edward O., 2015. "A new HIV prevention network approach: Sociometric peer change agent selection," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 192-202.
    17. Mustafa Dilber & Lokman Incirkus, 2017. "Message Oriented Approach to WOM Effects in Service Industries," Journal of Economics and Financial Analysis, Tripal Publishing House, vol. 1(2), pages 17-47.
    18. Shaul M. Gabbay & Roger Th. A. J. Leenders, 2003. "Creating Trust through Narrative Strategy," Rationality and Society, , vol. 15(4), pages 509-539, November.
    19. Zhao, Liang & Sun, Zhe & Chen, Si & Gugnani, Ritika & Sahore, Nidhi, 2024. "Social media opinion leaders and information diffusion of crowdfunding projects: Evidence from China," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 200(C).
    20. Wuyts, S.H.K. & Verhoef, P. & Prins, R., 2009. "Partner selection in B2B informational service markets," Other publications TiSEM 35b4b91f-294c-47a6-95b2-7, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    21. Yan Chen & Youran Qi & Qing Liu & Peter Chien, 2018. "Sequential sampling enhanced composite likelihood approach to estimation of social intercorrelations in large-scale networks," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 16(4), pages 409-440, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:anname:v:566:y:1999:i:1:p:37-54. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.