Joanne Cantor
Dr. Joanne Cantor is professor emerita and director of the Center for Communication Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she taught in the Department of Communication Arts from 1974 to 2000.
Cantor has published more than 90 scholarly articles and chapters on the impact of the mass media, with an emphasis on children’s emotional reactions to television and films. Her parenting book, “MOMMY, I’M SCARED”: How TV and Movies Frighten Children and What We Can Do to Protect Them (Harcourt), summarizes her research and its implications for an audience of parents, teachers, and childcare professionals. Her children’s book, Teddy’s TV Troubles (Goblin Fern Press), brings this message down to the level of a preschooler.
Her expertise in the areas of television violence, children’s fears, television ratings and the V-chip has led her to testify before the U.S. House and Senate and the Federal Communications Commission, to be quoted regularly in the national press and to appear on many national television programs, including being interviewed by Oprah Winfrey, Bryant Gumbel and Diane Sawyer.
Cantor regularly lectures to parent groups and organizations of mental health and childcare professionals, and lends her expertise to child advocacy organizations such as the National PTA and the American Academy of Pediatrics. She continues to conduct and publish research, and she also maintains an informational web site, www.tvtroubles.com.