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Online Social Influence: Past, Present, and Future

Social influence research has flourished for more than five decades. This chapter presents a comprehensive yet selective review of social influence research, demarcated by three points in time—pre-online, the early days of computer-mediated communication, and the current Web 2.0 environment. This chapter’s main objective is to show how concepts, theories, and models developed in earlier research can enhance understanding of online social influence in today’s digital world. We organize our review of online social influence research around the basic components of communication—source, message, channel, and audience. We also provide a critique and directions for future research.