Meta-Research of Development Communication Studies, 1997-2005:
Patterns and Trends Since 1958
The field of development communication in the United States has been in ferment
almost from the moment of its conception. Lerner’s foundational study, Modernizing the
Middle East: The Passing of Traditional Society, published in 1958, which established
the idea of using mass communication to aid in the process of moving individuals and
societies from traditional to modern, was not received with universal acclaim and
acceptance among American scholars, as it seems now common to assume. Among the
critics, one faulted the book for “generalizing on the basis of meager particulars” (Salem,
1959, p.129) and uninformed political judgments (Badeau, 1959, p. 1134). A historian,
noting a range of contradictory evidence, criticized the assumption of direct and powerful
media effects in the postcolonial world, writing: “That a high rate of media participation
indicates a weakening of the traditional forms of authority and movement toward what
Lerner understands by “participant lifeways” is a doubtful proposition” (Dawn, 1959, p.
661). These and other critics were silenced, marginalized and otherwise brought into line
with the predominant perspective that American experience with societal transformation
was a universally applicable model that could be exported to modernize the new states of
the postcolonial world.
Thus, the dominant paradigm of development communication, rooted in Lerner’s
model of communication and modernization (defined as individuals changing their
behaviors and “lifeways” to emulate the ways of the white west that were shown in
western media), did not become dominant because it was somehow naturally superior and
obviously correct. It became dominant through the powerful policing of intellectual
territory staked out by American functionalists and behavioralists interested in foreign
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Convention