Gandy received his associate degree from Nassau Community College and his bachelor's degree in sociology from the University of New Mexico. From 1969 to 1971, he wrote and produced Right On!, a public affairs television series for WCAU-TV. During this period, he also received his master's degree in Communication Behavior from the University of Pennsylvania, where Gandy grew close to his mentor, George Gerbner. In 1971, Gandy began lecturing at Third College, University of California, San Diego. In 1973, he enrolled at Stanford University as a Ph.D. student in communication, where he was a Ford Foundation Fellow. Gandy earned his doctorate in public affairs communication in 1976. From 1977 to 1987, Gandy was an assistant and then an associate professor of communication at Howard University. Gandy joined the faculty at Annenberg in 1987, where he taught until his retirement in the Spring semester of 2006.
Publications
Books :
Gandy, O.H.. Coming to Terms With Chance: Engaging Rational Discrimination and Cumulative Disadvantage. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate Publishing.
Gandy, O.H.. Communication and Race: A Structural Perspective. Edward Arnold and Oxford University Press.
Gandy, O.H.. The Panoptic Sort: A Political Economy of Personal Information. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Gandy, O.H.. Beyond Agenda Setting: Information Subsidies and Public Policy. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishers.
Gandy, O.H., Rivers, W.L., Miller, S., & Rivers, G.. Government and Media: An Annotated Bibliography. Stanford, CA: Institute for Communications Research.
Gandy, O.H... Communications: A Key to Economic and Political Change. Selected Proceedings from the 15th Annual Communications Conference. Washington, DC: Center for Communications Research, Howard University.
Gandy, O.H.. Engaging rational discrimination: exploring reasons for placing regulatory constraints on decision support systems. Ethics and Information Technology, 12, pp. 29–42.
Halbert, C.H., Gandy, O.H., Collier, A., & Shaker, L.. Beliefs about tobacco use in African Americans. Ethnicity & Disease, 17, pp. 92–98.
Gandy, O.H. & Baruh, L.. Racial Profiling: They said it was against the law! University of Ottawa Law & Technology Journal, 6, pp. 297–327.
Herman, B. D., & Gandy, O.H.. Catch 1201: A legislative history and content analysis of the DMCA Exemption Proceedings. Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal, 24, pp. 121–190.
Halbert, C.H., Gandy, O.H., Jr., Collier, A., & Shaker, L.. Intentions to participate in genetics research among African American smokers. Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention, 15, pp. 150–153.
Gandy, O.H., & Li, Z.. Framing comparative risk: A preliminary analysis. The Howard Journal of Communications, Vol. 16, pp. 71–86.
Wray, R.J., et al.. Preventing domestic violence in the African American Community: Assessing the impact of a dramatic radio serial. Journal of Health Communication, 9, pp. 31–52.
Gandy, O.H.. Journalists and academics and the delivery of race statistics: Being a statistician means never having to say you're certain. Race and Society, 4, pp. 149–160.
Gandy, O.H.. Racial identity, media use, and the social construction of risk among African Americans. Journal of Black Studies, 31, pp. 600–618.