Heavy emphasis was placed on capital intensive technology and centralized planning.
The communication scholars who were in favor of this approach, such as Scramm (1963-1964), Lerner (1958), Pye (1963) and Pool (1963) had profound influence through their writings in winning recognition for an approach which argued that the only way in which less developed countries could progress was by emulating the industrially advanced countries and taking the same historical path they had travelled. (Beltran, S, 1976).
The dominant paradigm also envisaged communication as a flow of messages that travelled only one way from top (government) to bottom (the people) – a process of 'conveying information and persuasive messages from government to a public in a downward hierarchical way. (Rogers, 1976, p133).
Media channels including broadcast technology when possible and change agents when not, were used to inform and persuade the people about development projects. The people were assigned the passive role of acquiescing to appeals for social change. (Narula and Pearce, 1986). Despite considerable research, the relative power of the mass media and communication in leading to development was mainly assumed rather than proven. Sinclair notes that: 'The failure of the media to bring about the instant modernization which the paradigm promised, compounded with the more general failure of "economic development" policies over the so called "development decade" of the 1960's led to critical re-evaluations in every quarter of the media's relation to economic development. (Sinclair, 1982, p286).
Communication researchers also began to question some of their prior assumptions, becoming especially critical of earlier neglect of the content of mass media, the need for social structural changes in addition to communication, if development were to occur. And the shortcomings of the classical 'diffusion – of – innovations' viewpoint which had become an important explanation for development.
