Diffusions of Innovation

 In today's Media Law and Literacy Blog Post, we will be discussing the diffusions of innovation and its related theory. 

What is Diffusions of Innovation?

Media Law and Literacy Chart in Relation to DoI-(HPU/Smith)

According to Wikipedia and [Everett] Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations "is a theory that seeks to explain how, why, and at what rate new ideas and technology spread" (Rogers,Wiki). Rogers believes that the diffusion itself "is communicated over time among the participants in a social system." (Rogers,Wiki) Overall, he proposed that there are five main elements that influence the spread of a new idea; "the innovation itself, adopters, communication channels, time and a social system." 

How do the ideas spread; My opinion

Overall, ideas spread from person to person. It is kind of like playing the social and team building game telephone. In the game, main ideas are passed from the starting point to those all the way down the line of people all the way back to the start. By that time, the reaction and overall topic has been spread to many different people, socially. This allows for people to become early adopters of a new invention. This falls under the experimental and pioneer areas while moving into the early adopter. Once the early adopters begin to spread their opinions about the new technology, the critical mass and majority/late adopters begin to get involved and pump up the popularity and user friendly ability of a new technology. 

How this connects to my EOTO presentation

Photo Credit (en.wikipedia.org)

Facebook is a company that follows this chart almost to perfection. A few Harvard students created thefacebook.com which was originally meant for college students to have a community and discuss their experiences. This social media site went from the pioneers to early adopters, and jumped all the way to the critical mass in which made Facebook one of the most popular social media sites if not the most popular in a matter of 3-4 years.