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Peer Communication Theory

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In Hawthorne Avenue in Newark, there was a mass exodus of numerous residents who families rushed out of their houses covering their faces with wet cloth masks makeshift from handkerchieves to escape from what they assumed was a gas attack. People all across the United States and Canada started calling the police and emergency services to seek advice and request protection against what seemed to them impending destruction and imminent death. In 1948, Paul F. Lazarsfeld wrote ‘The People’s Choice’ in which he asserted the public perspective was more likely to be influenced by their contemporaries than just agencies of mass media. This theory of peer communication was the two-step flow theory. It propounds the view that “opinion leaders” meticulously follow mass media, interpret the messages it conveys and then transmits their interpretations of these to their peers. This theory therefore implies overt and active participation of the audience in the communication process. The way people change their habits of dress, conversation, manners, behavior, inculcation of new professional styles and personal practices can all be attributed to peer communication. Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw developed the Agenda Setting Function Theory was developed after an extensive study of the procedure of campaigning for presidential elections in North Carolina. They highlighted the role of the media in influencing people to focus on certain issues and the print media

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