Diffusion of Innovations

Diffusion is a multifaceted perspective about social change in which innovations are communicated over time among the members of a social system. Key to understanding this research and practice paradigm is acknowledgment of its emphasis on diffusion as (a) an inherently processual activity that occurs over time (see Figure 1), (b) the relations among people and their organizations as channels through which influence is exchanged in a network of social relations as individuals decide how to respond to an innovation they have previously learned about (see Figure 2), (c) perceptions by potential adopters of innovation characteristics that partly determine whether they will adopt the innovation or not, and (d) the enabling and constraining force of the sociomedia-environmental context in accounting for diffusion.

Scholars dating at least ...