The Reluctant Farmer: The Role of Multimedia in America's 20th-Century Agricultural Transformation.

Ethnographic and ethnohistorical research with farm families in the Ozarks region of Missouri and Arkansas, USA, from 2002 to 2014, informs and inspires this study of the role of multimedia in the process of technocratic rationalization of farming in the United States throughout the 20th century. While interviewing farmers, I explored the agricultural media they consumed, ranging from farmer-organization literature to farm magazines and sales pamphlets. I documented and collected the primary sources of agricultural information and then systematically coded and noted patterns in the advertisement and article content. This paper presents the findings of that visual content analysis of farm media and the subsequent exploration of applied social science research that documented strategies for the diffusion of agricultural technology. I document and analyze the correlations between agricultural media content, applied research recommendations for industry, and changes on farms in the USA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]