Blackwell Reference Online

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Diffusion is a multifaceted perspective about social change in which people, innovations, and the media environment affect how rapidly change occurs. Scholars dating back at least to the German social philosopher Georg Simmel and the French sociologist Gabriel Tarde theorized about imitative behavior at the level of small groups and within communities, and the relation between these micro-level processes to macro-level social change. In the 100 years since, researchers have tended to conceptualize diffusion either at the macro sociological level of sector, system, national, or state change ( Dearing et al. 2006 ), the social psychological or communicative level of local relationships and how those linkages affect adoption patterns as in the classic studies by Katz & Lazarsfeld (1955) and by Rogers & Kincaid (1981) , or the psychological level of how individuals perceive innovations in the form of a codified set of pros and cons ( Manning et al. 1995 ). Beginning in the 1960s, diffusion concepts have been operationalized and used to purposively spread pro-social innovations through →  development communication in Colombia, Pakistan, Brazil, Nigeria, India, Finland, Korea, Tanzania, Bolivia, and Vietnam (see, e.g., Puska et al. 1986 ). Since 2000, diffusion studies have traced and explained the spread of kindergartens across cultures throughout the world, the spread ... log in or subscribe to read full text