Comstock, George 1932–

(George A. Comstock, George Adolphe Comstock)

PERSONAL:

Born May 17, 1932, in Seattle, WA; son of George H. and Alma Comstock; divorced. Education: University of Washington, Seattle, B.A., 1954; Stanford University, M.A., 1958, Ph.D., 1967. Hobbies and other interests: Contemporary fiction, gourmet cooking, travel, collecting Mexican folk art, thoroughbred horse racing.

ADDRESSES:

Office—S.I. Newhouse Communications Center, 215 University Pl., Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY 13244. E-mail—gacomsto@syr.edu.

CAREER:

New York University, New York, NY, assistant professor of journalism, 1967-68; RAND Corp., Santa Monica, CA, social psychologist, 1968-70, senior social psychologist, 1972-77; National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, MD, social psychologist, 1970-72; Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, professor of communication, 1977-79, S.I. Newhouse Professor of Public Communication, 1979—. Senior science advisor to U.S. Surgeon General's Scientific Advisory Committee on Television and Social Behavior, 1970-72. Military service: U.S. Air Force, 1955-57; became captain.

MEMBER:

International Communication Association, American Sociological Association, American Association for Public Opinion Research, Association for Education in Journalism, Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues.

WRITINGS:

Television Violence: Where the Surgeon General's Study Leads, Rand (Washington, DC), 1972.

(Editor, with Eli Rubinstein and John Murray) Television and Social Behavior, U.S. Government Printing Office (Washington, DC), 1972.

Milgram's Scotch Verdict on TV: A Retrial, Rand (Santa Monica, CA), 1974.

(With F.G. Christen, and others) Television and Human Behavior: The Key Studies, Rand (Santa Monica, CA), 1975.

(With Marilyn Fisher) Television and Human Behavior: A Guide to the Pertinent Scientific Literature, (prepared under a grant from the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation), Rand (Santa Monica, CA), 1975.

(With Georg Lindsey and Marilyn Fisher) Television and Human Behavior: The Research Horizon, Future and Present (prepared under a grant from the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation), Rand (Santa Monica, CA), 1975.

(With Steven Chaffee, Maxwell McCombs, and others) Television and Human Behavior, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1978.

Television in America, Sage Publications (Thousand Oaks, CA), 1980, 2nd edition, Sage Publications (Newbury Park, CA), 1991.

(Editor) Public Communication and Behavior, Academic Press (San Diego, CA), Volume I, 1986, Volume II, 1987.

(Contributor) Arnold Goldstein and Steven Apter, editors, Youth Violence: Programs and Prospects, Pergamon (Burlington, MA), 1986.

(With Hae-Jung Paik) Television and Children, ERIC, 1987.

(Contributor) Stuart Oskamp, editor, Social Psychology Annual, Sage Publications (Thousand Oaks, CA), 1987.

The Evolution of American Television, Sage Publications (Newbury Park, CA), 1989.

(With Hae-Jung Paik) Television and the American Child, Academic Press (San Diego, CA), 1991.

(With Erica Scharrer) Television: What's On, Who's Watching, and What It Means, Academic Press (San Diego, CA), 1999.

(With Erica Scharrer) The Psychology of Media and Politics, Elsevier Academic Press (Burlington, MA), 2005.

(With Erica Scharrer) Media and the American Child, Elsevier (Burlington, MA), 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

George Comstock is a writer and educator serving on the faculty of the Newhouse School of Communications at Syracuse University, where he is the S.I. Newhouse Professor. He previously was the science advisor for the Surgeon General's Scientific Advisory Committee on Television and Social Behavior, and he is an expert in the study of the effects of television viewing on the behavior and the social development of children. His participation in the surgeon general's study led to a number of published works, and he is also the author or coauthor of several additional books on the media and television in general, including The Evolution of American Television, Television: What's On, Who's Watching, and What It Means, and Media and the American Child, the latter two of which he wrote with Erica Scharrer. Media and the American Child gathers a wealth of research materials from the prior three decades and addresses the increased amount of time that the average child spends in front of a television with each decade.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

ONLINE

Elsevier Web site,http://www.elsevier.com/ (February 14, 2008), publisher's book descriptions.

Newhouse School Syracuse University Web site,http://newhouse.syr.edu/ (February 14, 2008), faculty profile.

University of Massachusetts, Amherst Web site,http://www.umass.edu/ (February 14, 2008), description of Media and the American Child.