John M. Phelan, Ph. D., is Founding Director of the McGannon Communication Research Center and Professor of Communications and Media Studies, Fordham University, New York City. He came to Fordham as Chairman of the Communications Department to redesign the curriculum when Marshall McLuhan was Professor of Communications there. He is a media reform activist who works with many public interest groups. Phelan’s writings include: Communication Control (ed.) New York: Sheed & Ward, 1969. Readings on the structures and motives of censorship from psychoanalysis to Chinese thought reform to the First Amendment.
Mediaworld: Programming the Public. A Continuum Book. New York: Seabury, 1977. Essays about the effect of modernization and industrialization on politics, leisure, art and religion through the media.
Disenchantment: Meaning and Morality in the Media. New York; Hastings House, 1980. Essays on censorship, ethinic programming, pornography, popular religious practices, media criticism, effects research, ritual and transmission models of communication.
Commercial Television Campaigns and the Public Interest. New York: McGannon Communication Research, 1991. Monograph on the genesis and ethos of public service campaigns; principles and case studies.
Articles
- The Meaning of Life
- Advertising: Commercial Rhetoric
- Managing Appearances
- Activist Television: Sociological and Public Policy Implications of Public Service Campaigns
- Cultivating Babel: Disinformation and Dissent in South Africa
- Cyberwalden
- The Pseudo-Content of the Processed Image
- Media: Their Structure and Moral and Public Policy Import