Abstract
The introduction of a new medium provides an opportunity for scholars to revisit
existing theories of mass communication. Blogging is a medium that has grown
tremendously in recent years, from just a few dozen blogs in 1999 to more than 42
million blogs today. One function of blogging is providing opinion and commentary on
news from the mainstream media. In this way bloggers act as intermediaries, much in the
same way Lazarsfeld described opinion leaders in his two-step flow of information
theory. This research examined blogging from the framework of the two-step flow to see
if readers looked to bloggers as opinion leaders. Results showed that bloggers were not
opinion leaders and blogs were perceived as less credible than mainstream media sources,
but that blogs do play a role in opinion consideration and opinion reinforcement.
