Technology, Adoption and Diffusion Of
Although not originally designed as such, diffusion of innovations has proven to be an important theory for explaining the dynamics of communication. Diffusion of innovations is a theory originally designed to explain how change agents influence social processes. It has become a theory used to address how a technology or technological artifact becomes adopted, what forces affect the adoption process, and how proponents of a given technology or artifact may better influence the adoption process. The theory addresses how new ideas and technologies are communicated, evaluated, adopted, and reevaluated.
Foundations of Diffusion Theory
Diffusion of innovations is important to the study of communication because of its focus on process and what factors influence the process of communication. Specifically, diffusion is conceptualized as the process by which an innovation is communicated through channels over time among the members of a particular audience. Innovations are ideas, practices, or objects perceived as new by members of that particular audience. Thus, the theory addresses how knowledge is strategically managed to create specific effects on particular audiences.
While not using the terms of the theory as they are known today, Gabriel de Tarde (a French sociologist and legal scholar of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries) has been credited with the initial conceptualization of diffusion of innovations.
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