Ernest J. Wilson III

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Ernest J. Wilson III, 2012

Ernest James Wilson III (born c. 1948) is an American scholar and Walter Annenberg Chair in Communication and dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California.

Biography

Originally from Washington, D.C., Wilson obtained a B.A. from Harvard College in 1970, and a M.A. in 1973 and a Ph.D. in 1978, both in political science from the University of California, Berkeley.

Wilson started his academic career on the faculties of the University of Michigan and the University of Pennsylvania. At the University of Michigan, he was director of the Center for Research on Economic Development and an associate research scientist at the Institute for Public Policy Studies. In 1992 he joined the University of Maryland faculty, where he was a professor and senior research scholar at the University of Maryland, College Park, holding a joint appointment in the Department of Government & Politics and in the Department of African-American Studies. From 1995 to 2002, Wilson was director of the Center for International Development and Conflict Management at the university, and he remains a senior fellow of the Center. In 2002 he was appointment at USC Annenberg. He is also a senior fellow at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy, a joint project of USC Annenberg and the USC College’s School of International Relations, and an adjunct fellow at the Pacific Council on International Policy.

Wilson has served in several senior policy positions in the public and private sector. He was director of International Programs and Resources on the White House National Security Council (1993–1994); director of the Policy and Planning Unit, Office of the Director, U.S. Information Agency (1994); and deputy director of the Global Information Infrastructure Commission (1994–1995).

In 2010, Wilson was appointed to the Editorial Advisory Board of Demand Media, a US Internet company that focuses on generating large amounts of low-cost content that is highly search engine optimized (often described as content farm).

Wilson is the recipient of numerous research fellowships and awards, including an international affairs fellowship from the Council on Foreign Relations and a postdoctoral fellowship at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

He is married to Francille Rusan Wilson, Ph.D., a labor and intellectual historian. They have two sons.

Work

Wilson’s scholarship focuses on the convergence of communication and information technology, public policy, and the public interest. He is also a student of the “information champions,” the leaders of the information revolution around the world. His current work concentrates on China-Africa relations, global sustainable innovation in high-technology industries, and the role of politics in the diffusion of information and communication technologies.

Books

In addition to his most recent books – The Information Revolution in Developing Countries and Negotiating the Net in Africa – Wilson co-edits the MIT Press series The Information Revolution and Global Politics and is a founding editor of the journal Information Technologies and International Development.

CPB

Nominated by President Bill Clinton, Wilson is the ranking senior member of the board of directors of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. He was reappointed to the CPB board by President George W. Bush in 2004.

Selected publications

• Rodriguez, Francisco, and Ernest J. Wilson III. Are poor countries losing the information revolution?. (2000).
• Wilson, Ernest J. The information revolution and developing countries. MIT Press, 2004.

Articles, a selection:

• Patterson, Rubin, and Ernest J. Wilson III. "New IT and social inequality: Resetting the research and policy agenda." The Information Society 16.1 (2000): 77–86.
• Wilson Iii, Ernest J., and Kelvin Wong. "African information revolution: a balance sheet." Telecommunications Policy 27.1 (2003): 155–177.