Page 197 - Culture Society and the Media

CULTURE, SOCIETY AND THE MEDIA 187
Dissemination of skills
The claim that the media could assist in the dissemination of specific technical
skills was a considerably more limited and verifiable claim. While it is probable
that over time the growing sophistication of dissemination strategies is likely to
have greater pay-offs, the specific role of the mass media has been rather more
limited than many first anticipated. Early strategies were often based on studies
of the diffusion of innovations, which showed that adopters of innovations could
be classified according to their receptivity to innovation, and that early adopters
could play an important role as opinion-leaders or trend-setters. It was of great
importance to identify the characteristics of early adopters, so that these could be
sought out as targets for communication about innovations, and so that
interpersonal processes could take over in the percolation of the new ideas
throughout the community.
This approach was both convenient and simplistic. It was convenient because
it meant that field-service agents for agricultural innovation programmes had to
concentrate on only a small proportion of the total community. Because early
adopters tended to be wealthier and to have larger farms, the impact was greater.
The early adopters were also easiest to talk to and persuade. The model was
simplistic because it assumed a more homogeneous community than was usually
the case: instead of a single set of opinion-leaders, there was usually a stratified
community, with opinionleaders in each strata. By concentrating only on the
wealthier farmers, therefore, the diffusion approach may have accentuated the
gap between rich and poor, because there was no continuous line of influence
and because the poor were not sufficiently motivated or were unable to innovate.
The poor needed more attention, possibly of a different kind (see Roling et al.,
1976). These considerations had important implications for the role of the mass
media in diffusion programmes, and raised difficult questions concerning the
resources available for highly differentiated approaches.
The idea that a major innovation programme could depend entirely on the
mass media alone came to be discredited, certainly. It could not be assumed that
governments or private media systems would necessarily make the resources
available for media dissemination. More important, effective communication and
diffusion was seen to extend well beyond the explicit content of the message and
beyond the confines of media organizations. Two important additional
considerations involved, first, the situational characteristics of the explicit
message, and second, the situational characteristics at point of reception.
Simple provision of the message was insufficient. It had to be provided at a
time, in a language or in a style acceptable to the listener, which would make
effective comprehension possible and likely. But broadcasting in many
‘developing’ nations had to cater for many linguistic groups, requiring the
apportionment of staffing resources and air-space to different groups, with
possibly a great reduction in effective listening-time for any one group and
considerable content duplication. This meant there was less overall time