In 1962, Everett Rogers combined
information-flow research findings with studies about the flow of information
and personal influence in several fields, including anthropology, sociology,
and rural agricultural extension work. He developed what he called diffusion
theory.
Rogers’s effort at integrating
information-flow research with diffusion theory was so successful that
information-flow theory became known as information diffusion theory (and
when it is applied to the diffusion of something other than information—that
is, technologies—it is called innovation diffusion theory). Rogers used both
labels to title subsequent editions of his book.
Roger’s work also illustrates the
power of meta-analysis when it comes to developing a more useful middle range
theory. A meta-analysis identifies important consistencies in
previous research findings on a specific issue and systematically integrates
them into a fuller understanding. If previous research has been grounded in
several different but related low-level theories, these can be combined to
create new, more macroscopic theories. Meta-analysis is gaining popularity
among post positivist media researchers.
Rogers assembled data from numerous empirical
studies to show that when new technological innovations are introduced, they
pass through a series of stages before being widely adopted. First, most people
become aware of them, often through information from mass media. Second, the
innovations will be adopted by a very small group of innovators, or early
adopters. Third, opinion leaders learn from the early adopters then try the
innovation themselves. Fourth, if opinion leaders find the innovation useful,
they encourage their friends—the opinion followers. Finally, after most people
have adopted the innovation, a group of laggards, or late adopters, makes the
change. Rogers found that this process applied to most American agricultural
innovations.
Information/innovation diffusion
theory is an excellent example of the strength and the limitations of a
middle-range theory. It successfully integrates a vast amount of empirical
research. Rogers reviewed thousands of studies. Information/ innovation
diffusion theory guided this research and facilitated its interpretation.
Nevertheless, it has some serious limitations. Like information-flow theory and
social marketing theory, information/innovation diffusion theory is a
source-dominated theory that sees the communication process from the point of
view of an elite who has decided to diffuse specific information or an
innovation. Diffusion theory “improves” on information-flow theory by providing
more and better strategies for overcoming barriers to diffusion.
Information/innovation diffusion
theory assigns a limited role to mass media: they mainly create awareness of
new innovations. But it does assign a very central role to different types of
people critical to the diffusion process. Media do directly influence early
adopters, but these people are generally well informed and careful media users.
Early adopters try out innovations and then tell others about them. They
directly influence opinion leaders, who in turn influence everyone else. Change
agents are also key people involved with diffusion. Their job is to be
highly informed about innovations and assist anyone who wants to make changes.
Rogers recommended that change agents lead diffusion efforts; they could go
into rural communities and directly influence early adopters and opinion
leaders. In addition to drawing attention to innovations, media can also be
used to provide a basis for group discussions led by change agents. This
strategy for using media was patterned after the success of agricultural
extension agents in the American Midwest.
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Rogers’s theory was enormously
influential. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) used
its strategy to spread agricultural innovations in the Third World. Rogers was
personally involved in implementing and studying a number of these diffusion
efforts. During the Cold War of the 1950s and 1960s, the United States competed
against the Soviet Union for influence in the developing nations. The hope was
that by leading a Green Revolution and helping them better feed themselves,
America would gain their favor. But to help them do this, the United States
needed to convince peasants and rural villagers to adopt a large number of new
agricultural innovations as quickly as possible. Rogers’s
information/innovation diffusion theory became a training manual for that
effort. Change agents from around the world were brought to Michigan State
University to learn from Rogers. Many of these people became academics in their
home countries, and unlike many other U.S. theories, information/innovation
diffusion theory spread through the universities of the developing nations
while agricultural innovations were spreading in their fields. In many parts of
the world, Rogers’s theory became synonymous with communication theory.
Information/innovation diffusion
theory represented an important advance over earlier limited-effects theories.
Like other classic work of the early 1960s, it drew from existing empirical
generalizations and synthesized them into a coherent, insightful perspective.
Information/innovation diffusion theory was consistent with most findings from
effects surveys and persuasion experiments, and above all, it was very
practical. In addition to guiding Third World development, it laid the
foundation for numerous promotional communication and marketing theories and
the campaigns they support even today.
But the limitations of
information/innovation diffusion theory were also serious. It had some unique
drawbacks stemming from its application. For example, it facilitated the
adoption of innovations that were sometimes not well understood or even desired
by adopters. To illustrate, a campaign to get Georgia farm wives to can
vegetables was initially judged a great success until researchers found that
very few women were using the vegetables. They mounted the glass jars on the
walls of their living rooms as status symbols. Most didn’t know any recipes for
cooking canned vegetables, and those who tried using canned vegetables found
that family members didn’t like the taste. This sort of experience was
duplicated around the world; corn was grown in Mexico and rice was grown in
Southeast Asia that no one wanted to eat; farmers in India destroyed their
crops by using too much fertilizer; farmers adopted complex new machinery only
to have it break down and stand idle after change agents left. Mere top-down
diffusion of innovations didn’t guarantee long-term success.
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Keywords: Diffusion of Innovation Theory, Diffusion of Innovation, CommunicationTheory, Communication Theories, Mass Communication.