Abstract

This article reviews some of the most significant stages in the academic career and research activities of Jay G. Blumler (1924-2021). Jay Blumler has been a point of reference for several generations of communication scholars. He has dealt with theoretical aspects and carried out empirical research in many different areas, placing them within a more general reflection on the relations between communication and democracy. The most important aspects of Blumler’s wide-ranging work are here placed within the peculiar characteristics of his working method: from the rejection of any reductionism to the attempt to adopt a broad and inclusive perspective, from the willingness to challenge established theoretical assumptions (even those deriving from his own studies) to the adoption of a future-oriented point of view.