From an Aspiring Journalist to a Social Media Opinion Leader
As far back as I can remember, I always had a desire to work in the news industry. I grew up watching my local news, 20/20, and often enjoyed interviews conducted by Oprah and Barbara Walters.
I spent my time in high school and undergrad preparing for a career as a multimedia journalist, or MMJ as they say in the industry. Countless hours practicing live shots, writing scripts, recording voiceovers, and interviewing various individuals to capture the story I desired to share. Although, that all changed when I was put face-to-face with deciding to pack up my life, move to a state I had never been to, and begin my career reporting during a time of extreme political unrest, countless school shootings, and heartbreaking incidents that took innocent black and brown lives. During all those years of studying how to do the job, I never thought what it would be like to do the job, or better yet if I would be mentally and emotionally prepared to do so.
After a career pivot and taking some time for self-reflection, I thought it would be best to leave that desired career behind and start on a new journey to study social media. Now I have been active on social media for over a decade, but it wasn’t until recently that I made it a priority to be a social media opinion leader for my community.
You may be wondering what that is, or why does it matter? In the late 1950s, sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld used the term “two-step flow of information” in his book titled, The People’s Choice to speak to the 1940 voting study. This term was then taken by Elihu Katz and applied to the field of mass communication study and research (Rosenberry & Vicker, 2017).
Britannica defines the two-step flow of communication as a theory which “proposes that interpersonal interaction has a far stronger effect on shaping public opinion than mass media outlets.” This theory drives the idea that mass media content is often first heard by opinion leaders and those individuals share that information within their real-life or social circles. With social media being accessible by almost everyone with a smartphone or tablet, we can apply this idea to modern-day media sharing.
As someone who still enjoys consuming the news, I turned my once life-long passion for journalism into a more approachable and relaxed way of news gathering and sharing.
I tend to put on my social media opinion leader hat while using Instagram. On this platform, I follow multiple news outlets and old classmates’ news accounts to stay up to date with the latest news, important updates, and those feel-good type stories. I usually take feed and story posts from these mass media outlets and share them with my followers via my own Instagram story. I find that I get a higher engagement rate when I share news-related articles that I am eager and passionate about sharing.
While there are times that I miss the fast-paced and high adrenaline news lifestyle, I find myself much happier being an opinion leader on social media.
