Dean Ernest J. Wilson III Speaks at the Taihu World Cultural Forum

Dr. Ernest J. Wilson III, dean of the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism, spoke at The Third Annual Conference of the Taihu World Cultural Forum held in Shanghai June 17 and 18. (See the write-up on Inside Annenberg.)  The Forum was attended by more than 500 prominent figures in politics, business, academia and media. The focus of the Forum is the facilitation of conversations about the importance of cultural soft power in promoting peace. Dean Wilson asked that delegates “reframe” the discussion of US-China relations in an effort to promote cultural understanding. The best way to accomplish this, he said, is by focusing on new people, new programs, and new platforms. Dean Wilson also outlined the findings of a recently released report on building trust between China and the U.S. The report was the result of a joint effort between the USC Annenberg School and the School of International Studies at Peking University. Click here to See Dean Wilson speak at the World Cultural Forum, starting at 8:45 in and ending at 15:25.

Dr. Ernest J. Wilson III Leads Commission in Producing a New Report on Engendering US-China Rapport: Building U.S.-China Trust: Through Next Generation People, Platforms & Programs

Dr. Ernest J. Wilson III, dean of the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, is one of two selected to lead a commission of leading scholars, former officials and businesspeople who are prominent on the landscape of U.S.-China relations. The commission was convened to research and report on ways to improve the relationship between the two countries. As noted in a release from the USC US-China Institute, American and Chinese economies and societies are more closely connected today than they ever have been, yet headlines and polls conducted among the populations of the two countries indicate low levels of respect and high levels of distrust toward one another. Building U.S.-China Trust: Through Next Generation People, Platforms & Programs is a joint report by the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and the Peking University School of International Studies commissioned to address these issues. Dean Wang Jisi of the Peking University serves as lead for the commission along with Dean Wilson.

The report was presented at USC’s Davidson Conference Center Tuesday, April 22, 2014 and at The Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C., Thursday, April 24, 2014. Dean Wilson was a featured speaker at both events.

In addition to being dean of the USC Annenberg School and holding the Walter Annenberg Chair in Communication, Dr. Wilson is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He also serves as a board member of the Pacific Council on International Policy and the National Academies’ Computer Science and Telecommunications Committee. Wilson was a member of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting from 2000 to 2010, and chaired it in his last year, from 2009-2010. Focusing on the intersection between communication and public policy, Wilson has consulted for the World Bank and United Nations. Wilson also served on the White House National Security Council and as policy and planning director at the U.S. Information Agency. He has published widely on topics including governing global electronic networks and the politics of internet diffusion, and he advised on President Barack Obama’s transition team on matters of communication technology and public diplomacy.

Along with these accomplishments, Dr. Wilson has spoken widely on public diplomacy, communication and innovation issues, including presentations to the prestigious Boao Forum, the State Council, the Peoples Political Consultative Commission, and leading universities in China, and been published in outlets including China Quarterly and the Harvard Journal of International Affairs. He was a member of the Secretary of Commerce’s trade commission to China in 1994, and this year Dr. Wilson attended the China Development Forum in Beijing.

 

Ernest J. Wilson III in Foreign Affairs article: “Silicon Valley Needs a Foreign Policy”

Dean Ernest J. Wilson III wrote a June 20 Foreign Affairs article stating that high-tech American companies need to develop their own foreign policy.

“Looking forward, the tech industry needs to come together and be more vocal, and the federal government, rather than waiting for tech-savvy Generation-Y staffers to rise to positions of authority, must now align the strengths of the nation’s economy with the nation’s foreign policy,” Dean Wilson wrote. “Otherwise, the very tools that the country has created and nurtured will wind up being deployed by other rising emerging powers. By the same token, the long-term benefits of a serious and sustained Silicon Valley foreign policy will be greater international competitiveness, a higher standard of living at home, and a United States able to inspire and lead in the information age.” Read More »

Ernest J. Wilson presents to Department of State on Diversity and Cultural Competence

Dean Ernest J. Wilson III delivered a keynote address to the U.S. Department of State on June 7 titled Diversity and Cultural Competence. He outlined several “next steps,” including making diversity a strategic priority as well as an HR priority, and hiring and empowering change agents. Read More »

Wilson outlines what Innovation Clusters must do to foster economic growth

Dean Ernest J. Wilson III wrote an article for the Spring 2012 issue of strategy+business magazine about innovation clusters needing to draw on the power of an interrelated “quad” of sectors — public, private, civil and academic — to foster economic growth.

Dean Wilson referenced Washington Post columnist Vivek Wadhwa, who cited a study showing that most of the more than 1,600 Norwegian companies clustered in the five largest cities have failed.

“For the last 15 years, I have studied innovation clusters in more than a dozen countries,” Dean Wilson wrote. “My own research findings echo Wadhwa’s conclusion. Clusters can be vitally important to a country’s innovation and prosperity, but when they are misunderstood, they do not realize their potential. Most efforts to create clusters focus on one or two elements: the heroic innovators who champion their creation, the co-location of companies that lets engineers switch jobs by crossing the street, the business school spawning grounds with professors sympathetic to their students’ entrepreneurial ambitions, the startups with foosball tables in the conference rooms, or the provision of cash from an earnest government funder seeking to bypass bureaucratic roadblocks.” Read More »

Wilson Among Leaders, Experts to Discuss Los Angeles’ Potential as Next Global Business Hub

“Going Global: Boosting the Economic Future of Greater Los Angeles”

A domestic forum presented by the Global Cities Initiative at the Inaugural Brookings, JPMorgan Chase Forum at the University of Southern California on March 21, 2012.

Los Angeles metropolitan leaders will join national and international government, business, civic, and philanthropic experts to strategize ways to strengthen the city’s position as a hub for international business.

The L.A. Forum is the inaugural event of the five-year Global Cities Initiative (GCI), a project aimed at helping U.S. city and metropolitan leaders become more globally fluent, learn new strategies for expanding their global economic reach and connect with like-minded leaders from across the U.S. and throughout the world.

Response Panel – Realizing Greater Los Angeles’ Potential as a Global City
Moderator: Dr. Ernest Wilson III
Dean, USC Annenberg School of Journalism

For full agenda, click here: http://bit.ly/wYJA4s Read More »

The Interwoven Era: The US, China and its New Aircraft Carrier

Third, we are in an era of global convergence, an interwoven world where economies, cultures and lives are linked by movies, pop stars, and the Internet, by student exchange programs and international flight. While the PLA is notoriously opaque and Beijing has mastered the art of poker-face diplomacy, a recent study by one of this article’s authors and Dean Ernest J. Wilson III of the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism shows that China’s behavior in the global arena was found to be moving closer in line with accepted international norms on economic, aid, and energy issues. That is, while divergence continues in areas of democratic reform and human rights, the most effective way long-term to limit erratic behavior on China’s part is to continue developing the economic, political, and cultural ties that are inevitably bringing our two countries together. Read More »

The Flip Side of Metcalfe’s Law: Multiple and Growing Costs of Network Exclusion

International Journal of Communication, 2011

The study of networks has grown recently, but most existing models fail to capture the costs or loss of value of exclusion from the network. Intuitively, as a network grows in size and value, those outside the network face growing disparities. We present a new framework for modeling network exclusion, and show that costs of exclusion can be absolute, and might, at the extreme, eventually grow ~exponentially, regardless of underlying network structure. We find costs of exclusion can also be spread to the “included,” through several mechanisms including parallel networks, and also highlight how future research needs to capture the interaction of alternate or parallel networks to the network at hand. Backed by empirical evidence, this will have wide-reaching policy and design implications, including the role of subsidies or direct intervention for network access and inclusion. Read More »

Hollywood stars? I prefer a media summit any day

Ernest Wilson, the dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California and the chairman of the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, flew in from New York. “It helped me understand the needs of the region, and what I can do in partnerships that I have here to contribute to the region,” he told my colleague Keach Hagey on the summit’s final day. Read More »

China and India Confront Similar Challenges in the Media: A Trip Report

July 15, 2009

Just back from 3 weeks in Asia – India and China – and the biggest surprise was the agreement by leading journalism educators, practitioners and media experts in both countries that the current system of educating people for the media just isn’t working very well.  Who knew?! They are just like us!