The use of Diffusion of Innovations in a Mass Media Campaign

“Diffusion of innovations is a theory that describes how new ideas, opinions and behaviors spread throughout a community.”(Valente, p.34) In this paper I will show how this theory was applied in the reproductive health campaign in Bolivia. Diffusion theory is used to study the way in which new information is spread throughout a certain population and how innovation is adopted. To begin with, there are five stages in the adoption process: The first stage …

…the negative consequences of a strong pronatalist policy maintained for a long time by the government. In order to change the situation, first information had to be brought to the public, then their attitude had to be changed, the new behavior introduced and finally reinforced. Diffusion of innovation perfectly describes how such a campaign would be able to spread the new information, change the public’s opinion and establish the use of contraception as normative.