Key communicator

1. Mohit Sehal (2020A05)
Ph.D. Agricultural Economics (Second year)
sehal.mohit@hau.ac.in
CCS Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar

2. MEANING
• Person in any social who are sought out for information and
advice on general or specific topics.
• Rogers and Kincaid (1981) define opinion leadership as the
degree to which an individual is able informally influence
others’ knowledge, attitude, or overt behavior in a desired
way with relative frequency.
• such persons are respected in each social system to whom
some people look advice and information and who, through
such consultations, influence their behaviour and actions.

3. NOMENCLATURE
• First developed by lazarsfield et al. (1944)
• Since then called by various names as
• fashion leaders
• influencers
• information leaders
• each social system has its own opinion leaders.
• opinion leaders
• spark plugs
• style-setters
• taste-makers

4. IDENTIFICATION METHODS
•Sociometric method
•Information ratings
•Self-designating method

5. SOCIOMETRIC METHOD
• Members are asked to name the person(s) to whom they
go for advice and information on a particular topic
Advantages:
• questions are easy to administer and are adaptable to
different situations
• Have relatively higher validity
Disadvantages: require large number of respondents and
complex statistical analysis

6. INFORMATION RATINGS
• some members of social system are
purposively or randomly selected and asked to
designate persons giving advice for information
on a general or particular topic.
Advantage:
• economical and quick as it saves thoroughly
familiar with the social system.

7. SELF – DESIGNATING METHOD
• each selected person is asked a series of questions designed
to determine the degree to which he perceives himself to be
a key communicator.
• Advantage: measures the individual’s perception of his
being a key communicator, which in turn influences his
behaviour.
• Limitation: accuracy is limited to the extent the
respondents can identify and report their self-image
correctly.

8. ROLE OF KEY COMMUNICATOR
• Indirect communication of innovations in a social
system
• Legitimation of new ideas for diffusion into the system
• Self-adoption of a relatively greater number of
innovations
• Help in securing services and supplies to the members
in a social system

9. CHARACTERISTICS AFFECTING THEIR ROLE
•By Sandhu and Khurana (1971)
–Social participation
–Education
–Value orientation
–Socioeconomic status

10. CHARACTERISTICS
• Key communicators have been found to have distinctive
characteristics.
• By Roger and Shoemaker (1970)
1. External communication
2. Accessibility
3. Social Status
4. Innovativeness
5. Relationships

11. External Communication
•greater exposure to mass media than
their followers
•more cosmopolitan than their
followers
•greater change agent contact than their
followers

12. ACCESSIBILITY
• exercise relatively greater social participation then
their followers in social system.
SOCIAL STATUS
• relatively higher social status than their followers
as far as conditions in that social system exist.

13. INNOVATIVENESS
• more innovative than their followers
• when social system’s norms favour change, key-
communicator are more innovative but otherwise not
especially so.
• when the norms of a system are more modern, key-
communicator are more monomorphic. monography is
the tendency of a key communicator to act as such for
only one topic.

14. RELATIONSHIP TO SOCIAL SYSTEM
according to Shan-Kariah (1969), the key-
communicators under Indian conditions are:
• perceived as the best farmers when the social
system is actively modern.
• social stars when the social is relatively
traditional.

15. • On the basis of a review made by Sandhu (1970): large
number of research studies conducted under Indian
conditions, no specific conclusions could by drawn
regarding age, education, farm size etc.
• although key-communicators tend to belong to the
middle-age group i.e., 30 to 50 years, be somewhat
better educated and own relatively larger farms than their
followers.

16. • Identification and understanding of such leaders is not
sufficient.
• Extension workers must train them and use them for an
effective interfacing with the audience
As Boon (1985)
• The extension educator must have knowledge and
understanding of the process and strategies for interfacing
with the key communicators in a social system to use them to
legitimise and indirectly spread the message.
CONCLUSION