Saving the World
This chapter traces the beginnings of the field of communication for development (c4d), from the very early years of development aid with Harry S. Truman's “Four Points” speech to Congress in 1949 through the 1960s and the early definition of the modernization-diffusion paradigm that set the direction of c4d for at least two decades. It also examines the three founding texts of c4d: Daniel Lerner's The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East (1958), Everett Rogers's Diffusion of Innovations (the 1962 first edition), and Wilbur Schramm's Mass Media and National Development: The Role of Information in Developing Countries (1964). Finally, the chapter looks at the major histories of the general field of communication study to better understand how the beginnings of the c4d field grew organically from the first period of mass communication studies in the United States. It concludes that c4d is intimately tied to the emerging mass communication field in the context of the cold war and national and international institutions providing funding for development and communication projects.