Volume 35, Issue 2

The knowledge of opinion leaders (in their area of interest) to a certain extent has always been taken for granted by communication scholars. This article investigates what opinion leaders really know. Two studies will be presented to answer the above question. Participants (N = 119) of the first study were assessed according to ratings on three scales of opinion leadership (Katz and Lazarsfeld, Personal influence. The part played by people in the flow of mass communication, Free Press, 1955; Troldahl and van Dam, Journalism Quarterly 42: 655–657, 1965; Childers, Journal of Marketing Research: 184–188, 1986), personality strength (Noelle-Neumann, Persönlichkeitsstärke, Der Spiegel, 1983) and political knowledge. In the second study, respondents (N = 727) were assessed according to ratings of opinion leadership (Childers, Journal of Marketing Research: 184–188, 1986) and political knowledge. In both studies, it was found that opinion leaders can be divided into ‘informed opinion leaders’, who know a lot in their area of interest, and ‘uninformed opinion leaders’, who are ill-informed about the field they claim as theirs. In both studies ‘informed opinion leaders’ read newspapers approximately one hour longer per week than ‘uninformed opinion leaders’.

This article focuses on how leaders of new right-wing populist parties are portrayed in the mass media. More so than their established counterparts, new parties depend on the media for their electoral breakthrough. From a theoretical perspective, we expect prominence, populism, and authoritativeness of the party leaders' media appearance to be essential for their electoral fortunes. We used systematic content analyses of 17 Dutch media outlets during the eight weeks prior to the 2006 national elections ( n = 1,001) and compared the appearances of four right-wing populist and seven mainstream party leaders. This article makes two contributions to the existing literature: First, we develop valid and reliable indicators of authoritativeness and populism and apply them to a systematic content analysis. Second, we show that more successful right-wing populist leaders were more prominent during the election campaign and that the most successful right-wing populist leader also appears more authoritative in the news.

Considering the growing interest of marketers to communicate with ethnic minority groups in an increasingly more diverse society and the limited empirical work on ethnic minorities as consumers, this study aims to explore the way in which ethnic marketing practices are perceived by both practitioners and ethnic minority consumers in Flanders. By means of structured in-depth interviews the opportunities and limitations of ethnic marketing in a small, though multi-ethnic, society are evaluated. On the one hand, the study shows that young adults with ethnic origins feel particularly positive about their recognition and inclusion as a ‘new’ target group in the market. On the other, both practitioners and ethnic minority consumers articulate their reservations about the economic benefits, the social impact and desirability of adjustments in advertising messages in order to target ethnic minority consumers.

This article reports on a survey of youth in Brussels ( N = 1,005) and their ownership and use of digital technologies, focusing specifically on the social and cultural diversity within this group. Socio-cultural diversity includes differences regarding ethnicity and gender, language and educational attainment, as well as social and economic status. The relationship of these socio-cultural differences with the digital divide in terms of ownership and use is investigated. The data show a persistent ownership divide between socially weaker versus stronger groups accompanied by an emerging socially compensatory function of instrumentally oriented user profiles among the socially weaker groups.