Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 7 Document Number: D10093
Notes:
Pages 81-83 in Workshop on communications linkages between national programs and international agricultural organizations, Cali, Colombia, April 14-18, 1986., This presentation abstract is maintained in ACDC storage within Document No. D09983, Abstract of a conference presentation from the files of the Agricultural Communications Program, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
International: Salem Press Biographical Encyclopedia
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 203 Document Number: D12175
Notes:
Online via UI Library Catalog search. Ebscohost. 4 pages., Biography of an influential rural and general sociologist, communication specialist, writer, and professor best known for developing the theory of diffusion and adoption of agricultural and other innovations.
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."