Multistep Flow of Communication: Online Media and Social Navigation

The process of message dissemination has been a rich area of mass media scholarship since the early twentieth century, but the popularity of social media and rise in participatory communication have brought renewed interest to the topic. This entry explores the study of information flow and social navigation in online spaces. It describes the ways that information flow theory has been used to conceptualize the transmission of information in Web-based communication, considers the emergence of social navigation research, and looks at emerging scholarship in the field.