Diffusion of Innovation wrap
I didn't have a lot to say in the class discussion on diffusion of innovation theory, mostly because it's hard for me to get my mind around the communication methods of corn farmers in Iowa, but here are a couple quick thoughts that are much overdue.
I wonder how the people who study stuff like this justify their existence. Obviously, the Iowa corn farmers and the doctors in Illinois ( I think that was where the example study took place) don't listen to anyone who isn't in their circle when they're making decisions about what they do. In the doctors' case, it was a new drug, in the farmers' case, it was a new kind of hybrid seed corn. The way both spread was through word-of-mouth among farmers and doctors, respectively, and not because some suit from a university said it was better. So why study diffusion of innovation theory? Even if we understand better ways to get information out to people, is it going to do any good if they don't listen?
I wonder how the people who study stuff like this justify their existence. Obviously, the Iowa corn farmers and the doctors in Illinois ( I think that was where the example study took place) don't listen to anyone who isn't in their circle when they're making decisions about what they do. In the doctors' case, it was a new drug, in the farmers' case, it was a new kind of hybrid seed corn. The way both spread was through word-of-mouth among farmers and doctors, respectively, and not because some suit from a university said it was better. So why study diffusion of innovation theory? Even if we understand better ways to get information out to people, is it going to do any good if they don't listen?
posted by Jeremy and Ashley Wood at 8:03 AM
1 Comments:
oh, how short-sighted. do a search, however superficial, on diffusion of innovation/adoption theory. you will get a flood of research. it's been huge. we read the initial study. it's been a huge area of research ever since. maybe i should have made this point more clearly in class.
why study it if people won't listen? maybe it's to find out why they don't listen. under what conditions they do? wer'e not talking about only corn feed or broadband. we're also talking about AIDS treatments, water purification and sterilization, bird flu vaccinations >> a lot of really serious stuff. studying how and why people do or do not adopt something that is so obvoiusly in their best interests is so obviously in all our best interests, i would think.
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