The Institute of Public Relations awarded this paper a “Top 3 Competition Paper of Practical Significance” at the 16th International PR Research Conference (2013).

This research-in-progress seeks to uncover a deeper understanding of how influence works online, and how we might measure influence beyond the outputs and outtakes. In this literature review, several salient themes emerge:

  • Influence explained via social impact and opinion leadership
  • Mixed results on both accounts
  • Influence applied by a group on its individual members
  • By and large, literature supports this principle
  • Social identification with the group leads to being influenced by its members
  • Influence as a consequence of position in a social network
  • Two researchers did the same experiment and got different results. One study finds that influence rises according to position, but influence wanes as the scale of the network increases

Download “Is that all there is? A literature review and potential approach to measuring influence in social media”

Heidy Modarelli handles Growth & Marketing for IPR. She has previously written for Entrepreneur, TechCrunch, The Next Web, and VentureBeat.
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One thought on “Is that all there is? A literature review and potential approach to measuring influence in social media

  1. Should be helpful in putting together my research paper on Role of Social Media in influencing governance in Society – an attempt to present this at the 23rd AMIC conference in Bangkok in July 2014.

    Am trying to figure out how and where Social Media plays a role in delivering citizen services and trying to improve Governance in Society – a case study of Hyderabad, one of the first city in India to promote e-governance.

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