I was very fortunate to have been selected as an ICA Fellow at the 2015 ICA Meeting in San Juan, Puerto Rico. I was among wonderful and international company, including Lance Bennett, Noshir Contractor, Hans Mathias Kepplinger, Hak-Soo Kim, Malcolm R. Parks, and Steven R. Wilson.
The College of Communication Arts & Sciences at MSU put together a terrific blog about the award, which follows:
Quello Center Director Elected ICA Fellow
William Dutton, Quello Professor of Media and Information Policy in the College of Communication Arts and Sciences and Director of the Quello Center, recently was inducted into the prestigious group of International Communication Association (ICA) Fellows in recognition of his distinguished scholarly contributions to the field of communication.
“William Dutton is the outstandingly successful founding Director of the Oxford Internet Institute, as well as an Oxford Don and currently channeling scholarly input into Washington in the area of telecommunications policy,” the ICA said in a statement. “He has been exceptionally productive and influential in a variety of areas concerning communication and information technologies and communication policy for nearly four decades.
“His contributions range from research on implications of computing and the Internet for society, his international collaborations, and his highly influential development of and commitment to institution-building, through journals (especially helping to found and edit Information, Communication and Society), the Oxford Internet Institute, and now the Quello Center.”
Dutton was the first Professor of Internet Studies at the University of Oxford, a position he held from 2002 to 2014, where he was Founding Director of the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) and a Professorial Fellow of Balliol College. He also is a Professor Emeritus at the Annenberg School at USC, where he was elected President of the University’s Faculty Senate.
“This is a well-deserved recognition for pioneering research on the Internet and a wealth of contributions to the field,” said Prabu David, Dean of the College of Communication Arts and Sciences. “This is a great honor. Less than 2 percent of current ICA members are fellows.”
Dutton has received numerous grants for his research and is widely published. His research interests include a wide range of issues concerning the Internet and society, policy and regulation, such as initiatives around digital divides, the role of networked, distributed collaboration and digital social research, and politics and the Internet, including his influential conception of the Internet’s Fifth Estate.
“His long and distinguished career in the areas of ICTs (information and communication technology) and policy is also distinguished by his early promotion of the socio-technical systems approach, public policy issues involving ICTs, the critical understanding of ‘wired cities,’ and the ‘ecology of games’ theory. Notably, he early on highlighted a more international perspective on ICT research and policy,” the ICA said in its statement.
Dutton currently is the principal investigator of an MSU research team working on a Net Neutrality Impact Study. The goal of this research is to provide a non-partisan, unbiased assessment of the short-, medium- and long-term implications of the FCC’s new order approving rules that support net neutrality. He also is leading a Quello Center team focused on the use of the Internet for the social and economic revitalization of Detroit, and is a co-principal on an Oxford cybersecurity project.
Dutton was recognized as an ICA Fellow at the International Communication Association annual conference May 21-25 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He expressed his appreciation of this recognition, saying: “I thank ICA for this honor as well as the many colleagues in our burgeoning global field of communication arts and sciences who have supported my work on the policies and practices shaping the Internet and its societal implications. I believe James H. Quello would be proud of his center.”
