Mass and interpersonal communication are rapidly converging as people integrate an assortment of Internet-based tools into their communication repertoires. This convergence prompts dramatic changes in the conditions that once were presumed to distinguish mass from interpersonal communication, most notably differences in communication directionality and scale, audience size and identification, and a host of cues that signal source credibility. This article proposes a number of features of technological convergence in this context—including shifts in message control, audience scale, and source, receiver, and temporal ambiguity—and describes illustrative implications for social influence processes. These features highlight areas that traditional mass and interpersonal communication perspectives cannot fully describe alone, and suggest new methods and directions for the examination of online social influence.

中文翻译：

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在线社会影响力与大众和人际交往的融合

随着人们将各种基于Internet的工具集成到他们的通讯库中，大众和人际交流正在迅速融合。这种融合促使人们曾经认为可以将大众与人际交往区分开的条件发生了巨大变化，最显着的是交流方向和规模，听众规模和身份的差异，以及表明信号源可信度的许多线索。本文提出了在这种情况下技术融合的许多功能，包括消息控制，受众规模以及来源，接收者和时间歧义的转变，并描述了对社会影响过程的说明性含义。这些功能突显了传统的大众和人际传播视角无法单独描述的领域，