COMMERCE 3S03 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: American Heart Association, Nicotine, Boogie 2Nite
Document Summary
A gatekeeper is a member of a group or community that either formally or informally influences the culture. Gatekeepers are essential for the diffusion of new ideas, this is especially true for products that pose a controversy in consumer health. An informal gatekeeper may include friends, family, and/or style/lifestyle leaders basically, anyone with the power to influence others to follow their lead. An example of an informal gatekeeper here, would be celebrity endorsers who support the e-cigarette maker"s claims; such as leonardo dicaprio and jenny mccarthy. They may also propel the notion that vaping is higher class than smoking. These two celebrities have the power to sway public opinion and spread the normalization (or product diffusion) of e-cigarettes. Another type of informal gatekeeper involves media outlets that market vaping via print, tv, internet, etc basically authors, writers, bloggers, news reporters, etc (i. e. cnn refers to a journal of pediatrics study).