Dr. Anthony Olorunnisola

Anthony Olorunnisola is a tenured professor and head of the Department of Film-Video and Media Studies since July 2006. He routinely teaches undergraduate and graduate courses that include media and society, world media systems, and comparative theories of press systems.
A William J. Fulbright alumnus, Dr. Olorunnisola is keenly interested in the nature, development [functional and/or dysfunctional] and transformation of social systems. He specifically studies media systems especially as they interact with and are influenced by political, economic, and cultural systems of nations. This dimension of his work has produced several journal articles and four (4) edited book volumes about the co-transformation of political, economic and media systems – with especial focus on media in African transitional societies [e.g., post-apartheid and post-military to democratic governance].

Lately, Dr. Olorunnisola’s focus has embraced studies of segments of societies’ systems that may — when unchecked — lead democratized nations toward dysfunctionality. His ongoing work include an edited volume which examines the post-democratic status of broadcast media policies across Africa.

A second project in West Africa seeks to understand connections between mass-illiteracy and mass-innumeracy among youth populations and impacts thereof on democratic citizenship, public policy and social justice. His aspiration in the latter instance is to move beyond mere data-collection and publication of findings to seeking avenues of active collaborative interventions that can ameliorate identified social dysfunctionalities. Core question posed by the West Africa project follows: Can we use communication research to identify social dysfunction and, thereafter, employ functional social and computerized network structures to reduce mass-illiteracy and mass-innumeracy among West African youth populations?

Olorunnisola currently serves on the editorial boards of seven U.S. and Africa-based academic journals.