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."
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Document Number: C17068
Notes:
Pages 49-52 in Wilbur Schramm and Daniel Lerner (eds.), Communication and change: the last ten years - and the next. University Press of Hawaii, Honolulu. 372 pages.
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Document Number: C21630
Notes:
Pages 129-146 in Bella Mody (ed.), International and development communication: a 21st century perspective. Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, California. 304 pages.
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Document Number: C14197
Notes:
Chapter 23 in William B. Gudykunst and Bella Mody (eds.), Handbook of international and intercultural communication, second edition. Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA. 606 pages.
