UGC NET/JRF EXAM, Mass Communication & Journalism,June-2019*

Diffusion of innovations is a theory that seeks to explain how, why, and at what rate new ideas and technology spread. Everett Rogers, a professor of communication studies, popularized the theory in his book Diffusion of Innovations; the book was first published in 1962,

and is now in its fifth edition (2003). Rogers argues that diffusion is the process by which an innovation is communicated over time among the participants in a social system. The origins of the diffusion of innovations theory are varied and span multiple disciplines.

Rogers proposes that four main elements influence the spread of a new idea: the innovation itself, communication channels, time, and a social system.

This process relies heavily on human capital. The innovation must be widely adopted in order to self-sustain. Within the rate of adoption, there is a point at which an innovation reaches critical mass.

The categories of adopters are innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards. Diffusion manifests itself in different ways and is highly subject to the type of adopters and innovation-decision process.

The criterion for the adopter categorization is innovativeness, defined as the degree to which an individual adopts a new idea.

If the internet is forcing reluctant evolution from legacy publishers, it is encouraging enthusiastic innovation of scrappy publishers like Khabar Lahariya.

Khabar Lahariya is a female-run publisher that serves news in parts of rural India that have historically existed in media dark zones. Since its founding in 2002, Khabar Lahariya, which translates to ‘News Waves’,

fulfills a dire need for information that is relevant, and often vital, to its communities—from regional politics and developmental programs to crime and women’s rights.

Since it was first launched in 2002, the paper has grown from what its editors describe as a “boutique, feminist media house” to a formidable force in Bundelkhand, the arid, drought-stricken region that straddles southern Uttar Pradesh and a larger part of Madhya Pradesh.

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• What does it enhance?
• What does it obsolesce?
• What does it retrieve that had been obsolesced earlier?
• What does it flip into when pushed to the limits of its potential?

The four laws known as the tetrad or the LOM have been represented in many different forms over the years, in addition to the form formulated by McLuhan (1977).

One can also formulate the LOM in terms of the following four statements instead of McLuhan’s original four questions, giving the tetrad more of a representation of four laws rather than as four questions.