Socio-Political Influencers

… Over the next 10 years, Government should take further steps to empower citizens to shape services around them. Specifically, this means providing the tools, the information and the mechanisms necessary for citizens to exercise effective influence over services so that they change to meet their needs.

HM Government, Policy Review[1]

Today we have released a report on the key findings of a research study carried out by Ipsos's Participation Unit to explore theories of influence and consequently to identify a more meaningful Socio-political Influencer group. It brings together our wealth of data on political activism and places it in the broader context of literature exploring the role of influence in the private and public sectors, in order to understand how a small group of people may have a vital impact on public policy.

The Need To Understand Influencers

As private sector products and services are becoming more personalised, consumers are becoming more demanding not only of the private sector, but also of public services. Where previously a one-size-fits-all approach could have been acceptable, there is now general agreement across all political parties that choice, voice and empowerment are vital elements of successful public services.

At the same time, there has been a decline in trust in and deference to experts and traditional institutions — for example, our trends show a significant drop in the belief that the government acts in the people's interest and that it uses information honestly. In parallel with this, we have seen a huge increase in the sources of information available to people on social and political issues, making it more difficult to decide which to believe.

It is perhaps not surprising then that we have seen a rise in the importance of personal contact and recommendations in people's decisions and views; for example, the proportion identifying word-of-mouth as their best source of ideas and information has increased from 67% in 1977 to 92% in 2005.

In this context, it is vital for public services and those designing public policy to understand the mechanisms by which people influence others. And this is likely to become ever more important, as government considers how to use a more diverse mix of approaches to encourage "good" and discourage "bad" behaviours. This is already seen in the growing use of "social marketing", which uses traditional communications approaches and direct incentives and sanctions — but also the influence of family, friends and other personal contacts to encourage behaviour or culture change.

Traditionally, influence in the public sector has been characterised mainly as efforts to influence 'upwards' (i.e. attempts to impact on those in power), and the emphasis has been strongly on formal mechanisms (letter writing, protest groups, joining political parties etc) rather than informal mechanisms of influence such as discussing issues with friends.

In contrast, in the private sector it has been recognised that using informal opportunities to influence opinion can be vital in the success or failure of a new product or service — for example, "buzz" and "viral" marketing are now widely accepted elements of communications strategies. As the public sector starts to encourage the public to take advantage of the choice available to them, this paper suggests that there are a group of people — the Socio-political Influencers — who may provide clues to how the wider public will react and future trends.

Who Are The Socio-Political Influencers?

Our definition of Socio-political Influencers has drawn on a wide range of studies in the private and public sector, and is based on four main characteristics:

• they are gregarious / outgoing: in order to influence widely an influential individual will have to share their views with many people and not be shy about expressing an opinion;
• they are part of a number of networks: equally, the evidence suggests that attempts to influence are far more effective when the Influencer is known to those being influenced. Therefore, the number of networks an Influencer belongs to and the number of friends and acquaintances an Influencer has will both impact on how far their message spreads;
• they are well-informed / have expertise: they also need to be seen as a source of expertise on a subject if their views are to be seen as credible;
• they have a high level of activism: they are also much more likely to be involved in more traditional, formal approaches to influencing social and political issues — being involved in local/other groups, writing to politicians etc.

Our definition also requires them to think they have influenced others on social or political issues — which is clearly based only on their own perception, but has been shown in other studies to be an important indicator of actual influence. Overall, around 8% are Socio-political Influencers — one in twelve of the population.

Demographically, the Socio-political Influencers are spread fairly evenly throughout the population: they tend to be slightly older and educated to a higher level than the public as a whole, but not greatly so. Their incomes are slightly higher than average and they are more likely to be professionals rather than manual workers — but again the differences are not that large (which is similar to the patterns seen in other work on influence in the US).

Interestingly the Socio-political Influencers also have very similar political views to the general public as a whole. They are considerably more likely to vote, but their votes are cast in more or less the same proportions as the public as a whole. However, they have more confidence in Government policy, both in terms of its impact on public services and on the British economy — which is encouraging for the Government, given this group are better informed than average.

They are, however, no more convinced about the benefits of choice in public services — or even their own ability to make well informed choices. This is worrying — if this confident, informed group are concerned about making choices on public services it is likely that others will struggle a great deal more.

Our Socio-political Influencers do display some significantly different behaviours to the general public. They are, for example, significantly more likely to be members of Public and Patient Involvement Forums, Tenants Associations, Parent and Teacher Associations. They are also much more likely to have taken part in focus groups and other forms of consultation — another way in which they will exert their influence.

What Use Are Socio-Political Influencers?

There are three main reasons it is vital for government and public services to understand Influencers.

Firstly, of course we need to understand their views as they are likely to influence others. For example, 52% of them say that they have changed someone's mind about an important issue compared with 20% among the general public. And, even more markedly, 44% say someone has used a different public service or complained about a service because of something they've said, compared with 14% among the general public. They are the people who start conversations and express strong and committed views from a well informed perspective — understanding how best to communicate with this group could be vital to getting messages out to the wider public.

Secondly, their relatively high knowledge and understanding of the issues means they could provide some insight into how policy is likely to be received by the public once they are given more information. They will therefore be a vital source of information for those developing policy and approaches to service provision — in a similar way to how "leading-edge" consumers or "early adopters" are used in the private sector.

Finally, although no better than the public at estimating current public opinion, Socio-political Influencers were much better at anticipating future public opinion when asked to predict satisfaction with the Government in six months time. Although more work needs to be done to establish the predictive power of influencers, instinctively it makes sense that this group of people, with their high levels of knowledge and access to a wide network of people are able to not only influence, but also to anticipate public opinion. A very simple example of this was seen in the 1990s, where the proportion of letters MPs received about immigration more than tripled between 1990 and 2000 — while our regular tracking surveys showed that hardly anyone in the general population was raising it as an important issue. Public concern about immigration has shot up since 2000, so that it is now consistently one of the top issues in the country — something that we may have been able to predict quicker if we had been monitoring these more active, influential groups.

But there is much more to do to understand and verify the importance of this new group. We have now developed a panel of over 4,000 Socio-political Influencers with whom we will be conducting further research over the coming months.

Further information please contact: Bobby Duffy; tel: 020 7347 3267

Notes

1. HM Government, Policy Review, (2007), Building on Progress: Public Services