READ The opening section of the Wikipedia entry on Rogers' Diffusion of Innovations and skim the rest. Skim through as much as you like. This is not a reading assignment followed by a quiz. I just want you to read enough that you have gotten a feel for the concept. This is a very robust theory that you can you use in this class and in many classes going forward. It's my favorite theory!
REFLECT On the innovation you did research on for the EOTO project. Or think about newer innovations that might not have made it onto the Comm Tech Time Line — Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok or other innovations that you know of.
THEORIZE One thing that we do in academia is to theorize. Instead of simply describing a phenomenon, we try to theorize about WHY it happened. Rogers' Diffusion of Innovations (or Ideas) is a robust theory that helps describe WHY certain technologies are adopted and why some are not. Why are some people Early Adopters of a new technology? Why are some people Late Adopters? Why do some people simply opt-out?
IDEAS A remarkable feature of Rogers' Diffusion Theory is that it can also be applied to ideas. In the same way that innovations spread, so do ideas. My favorite example: The woman's right to vote. Think about that. It took 100 years of activism and protest for women finally to get the right to vote in 1920, with passage of the 19th Amendment. WOW! Just WOW! What a First Amendment achievement! But look at the chart in the photo. Now visualize that struggle for the right to vote on that chart. Who were the Early Adopters? Who were the Late Adopters? It's really interesting to see it that way, isn't it?
CONSIDER I remember sending the first e-mail of my life: It was 1995, and I was working in Paris. I was hired to write an article for The Guardian newspaper in London. A friend from Venezuela had an account with America Online. She had a dial-up connection. It took several tries and about 45 minutes, but we were able to get my article sent to London. It was published the next day. Why did we go through all of that trouble? We could have sent the article by Fax? Or I could have dictated the article by phone? Or I could have sent it by snail mail?
BLOG #8 About some new innovation, in the past or in the present, and view it through the lens of the Diffusion Theory. Why did they catch on and spread? Why did so many people become early adopters? Why are some people late adopters? Or not adopters at all? What about the downsides — do you see any negative consequences in the technology? For example, why am I not on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or any other social media? Why might I have made that choice for myself? And how would I benefit if I did? Would the positive outweigh to negative? How do you weigh that cost-benefit analysis with a new communication technology?
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