Melvin L. Defleur

Melvin Lawrence DeFleur (1923-2017) was an American professor and scholar in communications and social psychology, earning his Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 1954 for his thesis on stimulus-response relationships in leaflet communication. He co-developed the Media Systems Dependency Theory with Sandra Ball-Rokeach in 1976 and authored influential books such as 'Theories of Mass Communication' and 'Mass Communication Theories,' exploring the effects of mass media on society.