New News Media, New Opinion Leaders? How Opinion Leaders Navigate the Modern High-Choice Media Environment

• In Event: Understanding Information Repertoires and News Consumption

Abstract

We update the state of the art on political opinion leaders’ news media use against the increasing variety of news sources in the modern high-choice media environment. Building on a review of seven decades of opinion leader research and integrating a contemporary news repertoire approach, we conceptualize and empirically investigate how opinion leaders navigate the modern news environment. We analyze data from a representative general population survey (n =1,572) in Germany to show that opinion leaders’ news use today is less homogenous than found in prior studies. An omnivore repertoire with many offline and online sources was equally effective in aiding opinion leadership as a quality-oriented news repertoire. Those with an omnivore repertoire were lower in political satisfaction, calling into question the traditional part played by opinion leaders in the process of democratic opinion formation.

Authors

• Frank Mangold, U of Hohenheim

• Marko Bachl, U of Hohenheim