ABSTRACT
One of the major turns in “international” mass communication took place in the enunciation of the relationship between mass communication and “development.” Earlier in the history of theory, policy, and practice in that area, the predominant framework essentially saw the communication as playing missionary roles of sorts-helping the transfer of a certain character (Lerner, 1958), certain technologies (Rogers, 1969), and certain techniques (Rogers, 1969) from the more powerful and “developed” societies to the less powerful and “undeveloped” societies. The first role seemed to be captured in the idea that mass communication may serve as a transmitter and “magic multiplier” of a certain “modernization ethic,” and the second and third seemed to be captured in the attention that many experts gave to the role of mass communication in the adoption of certain “innovations.” At the root of these roles was the assumption that with the help of the mass media the advances that Europeans made in the Industrial Revolution and after World War II would be replicated in other parts of the world (see Melkote, 2002, and Cambridge, 2002 for elaborations of these issues).
