My grandfather, Denis McQuail, who has died aged 82, was a leading scholar in the field of media studies and mass communication. He is perhaps best known for his influential textbook McQuail’s Mass Communication Theory (1994), a comprehensive survey of how the media works.

Denis was born in Wallington, Surrey, to Irish immigrant parents, Annie (nee Mullan) and Christopher McQuail. After schooling at St Anselm’s college in Birkenhead, where he showed an aptitude for languages, he spent his national service in the Intelligence Corps learning Russian and studied history at Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

He then took up a research position in the television research unit at Leeds University. His first book (together with Joseph Trenaman), Television and the Political Image – a groundbreaking study of the influence of television on the 1959 general election – was published in 1961.

In Leeds Denis met and married Rosemary Beveridge. He moved to Southampton University in 1965 and in 1975 became a professor, following an analysis of newspaper content for the third royal commission on the press (1974-77), which proposed a written code of practice for newspapers.

In 1977 he became professor of mass communication at the University of Amsterdam, a move that opened up international networks that he would support for the rest of his life. A firm believer in collaboration, he co-founded both the European Journal of Communication and the Euromedia Research Group.

Through his career Denis accepted various short attachments to other organisations, including the Universities of Harvard, Columbia, Pennsylvania, Rome and Moscow – where he was made honorary professor in 2010. His later books included Media Performance: Mass Communication and the Public Interest (1992) and Journalism and Society (2013).

After retirement he took great pleasure in travelling with Rosemary to various conferences and engagements, where his thoughtfulness, kindness, intelligence and wit meant he was always in demand. He continued to write, and to the last was scribbling new thoughts on backs of envelopes.

A lover of good food and wine, Denis was also a devourer of thrillers, a painter, an admirer of churches, a gentle cyclist, an amateur card player, a gardener and an occasional supporter of Tranmere Rovers.

Rosemary died in 2014. Denis is survived by their children, Rachel, Thomas and Matthew, and nine grandchildren.