Jay Blumler

Jay G. Blumler (February 1924 – February 2021)^[1] was an American-British theorist of communication and media. He was Emeritus Professor of Public Communication at the University of Leeds, and also Emeritus Professor of Journalism at the University of Maryland, having spent his early academic life largely in the UK.

Born in New York in February 1924, he served as an interpreter for the US Army in Berlin during the Second World War.^[2] As Chair of the American Veterans Committee in Berlin he was invited to have tea with Eleanor Roosevelt when she visited the city. She had heard of some of the charity work that his committee had done and asked to meet with them.^[2]

In 1947 Blumler became a political science graduate of Antioch College. From 1949 he taught political theory at Ruskin College, Oxford, before taking a position in Leeds in 1963, as Granada Television Research Fellow at the University of Leeds. In 1966 Jay established the Centre for Television Research and became the University’s first Professor of Public Communication in 1978. He retired from Leeds in 1989 but continued to publish prolifically as well as teaching for one semester each year at the University of Maryland.^[2]

Works[]

• Television in Politics: Its Uses and Influences (1968) with Denis McQuail
• The Uses of Mass Communications: Current Perspectives on Gratifications Research (1974) editor with Elihu Katz
• The Challenge of Election Broadcasting. Report of an Enquiry by the Centre for Television Research, University of Leeds (1978) with and
• La télévision fait-elle l'élection?: Une analyse comparative, France, Grande-Bretagne, Belgique (1978) with and
• Communicating to Voters: Television in the First European Parliamentary Elections (1983) editor with
• Research on the Range and Quality of Broadcasting Services. A Report for the Committee on Financing the BBC.(HMSO 1986) with ,
• Wired Cities: Shaping the Future of Communications (1987) editor with William H. Dutton and
• Broadcasting Finance in Transition: A Comparative Handbook (1991) editor with T. J. Nossiter
• The Formation of Campaign Agendas: A Comparative Analysis of Party and Media Roles in Recent American and British Elections (1991) with Michael Gurevitch, Holli A. Semetko,
• Comparatively Speaking: Communication and Culture across Space and Time (1992) editor with ,
• Television and the Public Interest: Vulnerable Values in Western European Broadcasting (1992) editor
• The Crisis of Public Communication (1995) with

References[]

• Ellis Cashmore and Chris Rojek, Dictionary of Cultural Theorists, 1999, pp. 75-76
• Professor Jay G. Blumler (1924–2021)