Commentary on Elements of Diffusion

The discussion on diffusion was very enlightening for me. I’ve always been curious as to how the process of diffusing innovations in society works, and it was very helpful for me to learn about the S-shape curve and the bell-shape curve that allow us to understand how diffusion works and what the rate of change of diffusion is.
The question that really intrigues me, that we discussed a little in class, but not enough to satisfy my intellectual pursuit, is the question of homophily and heterophily among opinion leaders. We talked about whether or not it was better for a society to be homophilous or heterophilous, and I don’t think we concluded that either one alone is better than the other. We didn’t, however, talk about opinion leaders. The first portion of the reading was focused on the fact that diffusion of an innovation fails when opinion leaders don’t support the innovation. It goes into detail about how the practice of boiling water was not able to diffuse among a Peruvian village, because the opinion leaders of the village didn’t support the innovation. It also talks about how mass communication itself isn’t enough for diffusion; that you really need a two-step flow, where information passes through mass communication channels onto opinion leaders, who in turn influence people with the information.
The big question for me is: who are those opinion leaders, where do you find them, and how do you influence them for the purpose of diffusion? The reading seems to indicate that different communities have different opinion leaders – one traditional village in India has older, less educated people as opinion leaders, while another progressive village in India has younger, highly educated and wealthy people as opinion leaders. I suppose it wouldn’t be too hard to go into any target community and ask people who’s opinion they respect the most for decisions, and based on the responses, come up with a group of “opinion leaders” for that community. But the harder question is “how do you influence them for the purpose of diffusion?” This may be the million dollar question, and the key to understanding the “tipping point” of diffusion where the bell-curve starts to increase exponentially. If the opinion leaders are truly opinion leaders, not just nominal leaders, then convincing the opinion leaders of the innovation should suffice (given no or low cost of adoption) for diffusing the innovation throughout the community. But we are faced with three scenarios; either the opinion leaders are homophilous, or heterophilous, or both. The reading seems to indicate that if the opinion leaders are heterophilous, it will be easier for them to adopt the innovation than if they are homophilous. In the Peruvian case, the true opinion leaders were homophilous, and had no intention of boiling the water, making it extremely difficult to diffuse the practice throughout the village. A well respected columnist in the New York Times who rights an influential piece on the American community would be an example of a heterophilous opinion leader having an impact on the community. I suppose the Google case would be an example of both heterophilous and homophilous opinion leaders influencing the Internet community. Doing virtually no advertising, but merely spreading by word of mouth through a combination of strong and weak ties, Google soon became the world’s most used search engine. In all three cases, it seems that heterophily is a crucial component – otherwise there is no room for innovation of ideas, but at the same time, it seems that without homophily, there can be no influence. It seems like the two-step flow model mentioned in the reading is in itself an answer to my question; mass media and weak ties are heterophilous sources of innovation, but true opinion leaders, usually strong ties such as friends and family, are the ones that one trusts enough to take their advice, so there must be some degree of homophily in order for trust to happen, otherwise there is no foundation on which to have a trust relationship.
I feel like the answer is that a combination is necessary, true opinion leaders must be homophilous enough to be trusted by a community, but heterophilous enough to be open to innovation. Therein lies the secret to diffusion.