Joshua Fouts

Joshua Fouts
Joshua Fouts Speaking at the 2009 140Conf in New York City. Image credit: Annika Lidne
Born	March 24, 1967 California, USA
Occupation	Digital Media & Cultural Relations Entrepreneur
Known for	Technology Innovation & Cultural Relations

Joshua Fouts (born March 24, 1967 in Inglewood, California, USA) is a United States digital media and cultural relations strategist, entrepreneur, and writer known for his work and research helping to define the evolving role of emerging technology on business and culture. He co-founded and directed the Online Journalism Review, the first digital publication of its kind, two think tanks the Online Journalism & Communication Center, the USC Center on Public Diplomacy, has taught graduate courses on the applied use of new media for business and cultural relations at the University of Southern California Annenberg School, before joining Dancing Ink Productions where he has co-directed numerous projects with Rita J. King on digital identity, community, collaboration, branding and cultural relations. Fouts is a senior fellow for Digital Media and Public Policy at the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, a Next Generation Fellow at The American Assembly, and a former senior fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs.

Early years

Fouts was born in Inglewood, California, USA after which his parents moved to Reno, Nevada where his father Roger Fouts started to gain notoriety for his work as a primate research scientist with the chimpanzee Washoe. This story is documented in Roger Fouts's 1997 best-selling biography Next of Kin: My Conversations with Chimpanzees

In 1981 when the chimpanzee research project lost its federal funding from the NSF and could not afford to hire graduate students, 14-year-old Joshua worked as a lab researcher collecting chimpanzee behavioral data for the project.

At 16 he was a Rotary International Foreign Exchange Student in Brasília, Brazil, during Brazil's 1984 direct-voting independence civil uprising Diretas, Já which he has cited as one of the single largest influencers of his career: "I witnessed a country transform itself. And being witness to that transformation lead me to form a better understanding about humanity and its capacity for transformation toward mutual understanding." Twenty-five-years later he would go on to collaborate on a virtual worlds project with Luis Inácio Lula da Silva one of Brazil's first democratically-elected presidents bringing then-Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil into the virtual world of Second Life.

Early career

In 1991 a fellow graduate student introduced him to the Internet and IRC just before the First Gulf War in which he began chatting with Israeli graduate students while Scud bombs landed over Israel: "My updates about the invasion came from students in Tel Aviv who told me, via IRC, about Scud missiles landing in their city as it was happening. This experience cemented my perspective on how Internet technology was going to impact the way people around the world would learn about each other. I wanted to be a part of using communications technologies to build dialogue and understanding."

He went on to become a Presidential Management Fellow at the Voice of America at the US Department of State (at the former United States Information Agency) and ultimately became Deputy Chief-of-Staff to the Director where he was part of the team that streamed VOA audio in 52 languages using what became REAL Audio. In 1994 he worked to install video cameras in radio booths years before Talk Radio adopted the now-ubiquitous practice. He was part of the team that developed what became voanews.com, which was the first broadcast news organization in the world to offer continuously updated program product on the public Internet. He worked on numerous public diplomacy projects throughout the world, including ; public affairs efforts at U.S. Embassy in Brasília, Brazil; negotiations with the former Soviet Republics to lease transmitters formerly used to jam VOA signals; and development of the first-ever TV/radio/Internet simulcast to Asia.

Early Projects

In 1997 he co-founded the USC Annenberg Online Journalism and Communication Center, which he also directed, and co-founded and edited its flagship publication, OJR, The Online Journalism Review, the first online-only digital media magazine chronicling how the Internet was changing the face of journalism before the journalism industry took serious notice. During his tenure, he grew OJR into an internationally recognized suite of publications, including OnlineJournalism.com, one of the first "blogs" (before the term was coined) covering the development of online journalism worldwide.

In 2003 he co-founded and directed the USC Center on Public Diplomacy, the first foreign policy think-tank dedicated to exploring cultural relations and public diplomacy, growing it into a worldwide resource center for ideas and innovation. While there he was a champion for helping governments and countries worldwide understand the potential value of new media for brand identity and outreach.

In 2005 he was one of the first researchers to propose and direct a project illuminating how games and virtual worlds could be used for cultural relations for which he received major grants from the Richard Lounsbery and John D. and Catherine T MacArthur Foundations.

Recent Projects

Digital Diplomacy:

He went on in 2008 to embark on a groundbreaking journey with Rita J. King to research the applied value of virtual worlds for cultural engagement, which culminated in their 2009 report, graphic novel and documentary published by the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, "Digital Diplomacy: Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds" which was presented to the Obama White House at its invitation.

Fouts has collaborated with Rita J. King on a series of projects exploring new ways to understand the future of work and education, through cultural outreach, journalism, health science education, brand engagement and cultural diplomacy through major projects for the British Council, the American University in Cairo IBM, Battery Dance Company and Manpower Inc.

He writes and speaks regularly about social media, digital media, identity, branding and cultural relations.

Affiliations

Fouts is a senior fellow for Digital Media and Public Policy at the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, a Next Generation Fellow at The American Assembly, an editorial board of the International Place Branding Yearbook, the Public Diplomacy Council, and a former senior fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, former board member of the International Visitor's Council of Los Angeles, the Institute for Photographic Empowerment, and the Friends of Washoe Foundation.

External links

• Joshua Fouts on Twitter