The Roles of Interpersonal Communication in Mass Media Campaigns

Abstract

Communication scholarship has witnessed an explosion of disciplinary divisions and specific topic interest groups in the past 50 years that represents either noteworthy maturation or a troubling splintering, depending on your vantage point. As a result, important intersections remain for us to explore. In this review, we seek to highlight connections between interpersonal communication and mass media campaigns by identifying related streams of research that help us to explain how and why interpersonal talk and mass media efforts routinely affect each other. In doing so, we identify three general categories of roles of interpersonal communication: (planned or unintended) media campaign outcome, mediator of media campaign effects, and moderator of campaign effects.