ABSTRACT
Social influence is one of the ways of explaining the phenomena, processes, and mechanisms occurring in the life of society – very often in situations where logic and rationality might suggest alternative accounts. This general statement applies essentially to all areas of social relations and public life. The development of online environment and virtualization of life means that social influence is now often mediated by technology. This phenomenon can be described as online social influence. In Latane’s proposition, the magnitude of the social influence exerted on individuals by their social environments is defined as a multiplicative function of number, immediacy, and strength of sources of influence. It increases in direct proportion to the square root of the number of people involved, in proportion to the power those people possess. Recipients play an important role in the process of social influence taking place on the ‘social web’. In this connection it is particularly important to note that recipients interact with senders.
