In extending the theories of opinion leadership and seeking to the online environment, this study sought to explore whether the established theories for the offline environment would also help us understand opinion leadership in the online world. The tests of hypotheses revealed consistent patterns of opinion leadership and seeking behaviors across the online and offline environments. However, these tests resulted in insignificant relationships between online opinion seeking and offline opinion leadership levels. Furthermore, the hypothesized negative relationship between online opinion leadership and offline seeking was not only not supported, but was contradicted. That is, those who had a high level of opinion seeking in the offline environment also displayed high levels of opinion leadership in the online environment. The current study also demonstrated that some psychological characteristics such as consumer expertise, domain-specific innovativeness and media habits, as well as attitudes toward online brand communities, were significant predictors for opinion leadership in the online environment. In addition to opinion leadership, the current study explored traits of opinion seeking, suggesting that people with a high level of opinion seeking may exhibit different characteristics and behaviors from what opinion leaders exhibit. / A Thesis Submitted to the Department of Communication in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science. / Summer Semester, 2005. / June 20, 2005. / Online community, Opinion seeker, Opinion leader, Online brand community / Includes bibliographical references. / Felipe Korzenny, Professor Directing Thesis; Jay D. Rayburn, Committee Member; Barry S. Sapolsky, Committee Member.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_176148 |
| Contributors | Sohn, Youngju (authoraut), Korzenny, Felipe (professor directing thesis), Rayburn, Jay D. (committee member), Sapolsky, Barry S. (committee member), School of Communication (degree granting department), Florida State University (degree granting institution) |
| Publisher | Florida State University, Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, text |
| Format | 1 online resource, computer, application/pdf |
| Rights | This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s). The copyright in theses and dissertations completed at Florida State University is held by the students who author them. |
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