Bloggers are Opinion leaders

Have you ever wondered who the most influential people in the World are? Are they politicians or are they the celebrities - actors and actresses, singers? Paris Hilton? I certainly hope not because apart from a few, majority are definitely not good role models.

I asked a few of my friends and quite a few mentioned their parents. Some mentioned peer groups and in particular- the opinion leaders. So who are these opinion leaders?

Searching for a suitable definition, I cam across several. Wikipedia defines an opinion leader as "the agent who is an active media user and who interprets the meaning of media messages or content for lower-end media users. Typically the opinion leader is held in high esteem by those that accept their opinions".

However, I prefer the definition given by Ronald S. Burt in his paper "The Social Capital of Opinion Leaders" in The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 566, No. 1, 37-54 (1999). According to him,

"Opinion leaders are more precisely opinion brokers who carry information across the social boundaries between groups. They are not people at the top of things so much as people at the edge of things, not leaders within groups so much as brokers between groups."

By this definition, I guess a lot of Bloggers are indeed opinion leaders. We share and carry information among various groups around the World. We bloggers can proudly say that we are indeed the most influential people in the World. Organisations, Governments and companies that ignore that fact do so at their own risk.