Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Document Number: C20704
Notes:
132 pages, Includes an historical overview of diffusion research from the 1940s to the 1970s, plus a discussion of recent trends and prospects for the future.
This article traces the emergence of the basic paradigm for early diffusion research created by two rural sociologists at Iowa State University, Bryce Ryan and Neal C. Gross. The diffusion paradigm spread to an invisible college of midwestern rural sociological researchers in the 1950s and 1960s, and then to a larger, interdisciplinary field of diffusion scholars. By the late 1960s, rural sociologists lost interest in diffusion studies, not because it was ineffective scientifically, but because of lack of support for such study as a consequence of farm overproduction and because most of the interesting research questions were thought to be answered."
