The Study Of Intellectual History Of American Development Communication Research:Generation, Crisis And Reconstruction Of Modernization Paradigm

The paper examined the course of intellectual history of American development communication research from 1958, the naissance of the research, with the perspective of research paradigm generation and evolution.The paper combed the evolving process of American development communication research, and indicated following point of views:development communication research shaping in the 1950s has been one of the important branches of communication discipline in its proceeding for the legitimacy and institutionalization. During this period, modernization paradigm of development communication research came into being. With the change of history and intellectual thinking, the modernization paradigm that once dominated the development communication research fell into the crisis in the 1970s. Hereafter, development communication research has transformed into an extremely complicated research field. Scholars with different academic background and views explored the relationships between development and communication by absorbing the resources of different disciplines. During the process of dealing the crisis, proponents of modernization paradigm of development communication research have explored new approaches. On one hand, they have retained and optimized the main assumption of modernization paradigm by downsizing research field into health communication field, so as to avoid the criticism of being ethnocentrism, and by utilizing social marketing and edutainment strategies to pay more attention to audiences'need and cultural elements; on the other hand, some advocates of modernization paradigm have transformed into leading architects of growing and flexible participatory paradigm by using some policing efforts, such as appropriation of concepts, to keep the essence of old paradigm. With the impacts of historical change, academic advancements and media technology, modernization paradigm of development communication research has been reconstructing.Given the complexity of development communication research and the shortcomings of existing literatures, the paper conceptualized the intellectual history of development communication research through the lens of a new narrating clue, which is the generation, crisis and reconstruction of modernization paradigm. By doing this, different approaches and dimensions, failure and accomplishments of development communication research have been examined.The paper made the inventory of American development communication research accomplishments by rereading classical literatures in development communication field, a critical genealogy of relationship between development and communication has been established. What's more, by reflecting the important issues in western academic field, and by generalizing the history of modernity led by western countries, to some extent, the paper would be contributory to Chinese development communication research and communication research.