Notes that radio played an important role in public education in two science-related areas - agriculture and public health. "These are (not uncoincidentally) areas in which government agencies and communities of experts took an early, active interest." Cites weather reports as early as 1921 (University of Wisconsin station) and regular farm market reports in 1922.
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."
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