Colin Anfield Hughes (4 May 1930 – 30 June 2017[1]) was a British-Australian academic specialising in electoral politics and government.
[4][5] In 1966, along with John S. Western, Hughes published a study of Australia's first ever televised policy speech on 12 November 1963, by then prime minister Sir Robert Menzies.
[6] At this time, Hughes was a Fellow in Political Science at the Australian National University.
[4] 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.