Modernization

Modernization is a vague concept. It is meant to indicate a process of complex social change that is taken to be linked with an increasing rationalization of the society and the individual. Modernization denotes a cluster of social processes, such as the taking over of scientifically based technologies, the proliferation of a state-sponsored system of education, urbanization, secularization, increasing interdependence within the society, an increase in political rights, and the introduction of mass media. Research on the relationship between modernization and mass media (communication and development research) emerged in the United States after World War II and had an important role in the propaganda battle between the Soviet and the nonSoviet forces for the allegiance of the peoples in the nonindustrial world.

The mass media were ...