Michael S. Griffin is a visiting professor of Cinema and Media Studies at Carleton College and immediate past Chair of the Visual Communication Studies Division of the International Communication Association (ICA). He previously taught visual communication studies, documentary film and video, and journalism and media studies for 25 years at the University of Minnesota, the University of Amsterdam, the University of Pennsylvania, and Macalester College. He earned his Ph.D. from the Annenberg School for Communications at the University of Pennsylvania where he was awarded a CBS Fellowship for doctoral study.

Griffin is currently the Visual Communication Area Editor for The International Encyclopedia of Communications, forthcoming from Blackwell Publishers. His essays for the encyclopedia will include the entries for "Visual Communication" and "Art as Communication." A sampling of his other publications includes: "Picturing the Gulf War" Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 72 (4); "National Autonomy and Global News Flows: CNN in Israel During the Gulf War," in International Media Monitoring;"The Great War Photographs: Constructing Myths of History and Photojournalism" in Picturing the Past: Media, History, and Photography; "Camera as Witness, Image as Sign" in Communication Yearbook 24; "From Cultural Imperialism to Transnational Commercialization: Shifting Paradigms in International Media Studies," Global Media Journal, 2(2); "Gender Advertising in the U.S. and India: Exporting Cultural Stereotypes, Media, Culture & Society, 16(3); "Picturing America's 'War on Terrorism' in Afghanistan and Iraq," in Journalism: Theory, Practice, Criticism 5(4); "Photos from Abu Ghraib," in Message: Internationale Fachzeitschrift fur Journalismus 3/2004; and, with Kaarle Nordenstreng, International Media Monitoring . He edited a special double issue of Communication entitled "Visual Communication Studies in Mass Media Research".

In 2005 Griffin was selected to give the Stans Distinguished Lecture in American History and Politics, "War Images and American Memory," at the Minnesota History Center. In 1995 he was named a Post-doctoral Fellow in the Annenberg Scholars Program at the University of Pennsylvania for his studies of the use of images in television news. His documentary film HANDSCAPES, with Emerson Coleman, was honored at the Paul Robeson International Film Festival at the Philadelphia Art Museum in 1979.

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