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John Stuart Western (born 1931) is an Australian academic and author.

He received his B.A. and M.A. and his Diploma of Social Studies from the University of Melbourne, and his Ph.D from Columbia University. In 1966, along with Colin A. Hughes, he published a study of Australia's first ever televised policy speech on 12 November 1963, by then prime minister Sir Robert Menzies. At this time, Colins was a Lecturer in Psychology at the Australian National University.

Their study comprised 250 voters who viewed the policy speech, examined the effect of this form of political communication, and traced its impact on the knowledge, attitudes, and opinions of this group. This was the first such detailed study undertaken in Australia, providing a testing of theories of cognitive equilibrium in relation to voting behaviour, and an examination of television's use in political communication.

Western is currently Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Queensland. He specializes in the sociology of mass communication. He has also served as a Commissioner on the Queensland Criminal Justice Commission from 1990 until 1994.

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "John Western", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0