Jeffrey Cole

In July 2004 Jeffrey Cole joined the USC Annenberg School for Communication as Director of the newly formed Center for the Digital Future and as a Research Professor. Prior to joining USC, Cole was a longtime member of the UCLA faculty and served as Director of the UCLA Center for Communication Policy, based in the Anderson Graduate School of Management.

At UCLA and now at USC Annenberg, Cole founded and directs the World Internet Project, a long-term longitudinal look at the effects of computer and Internet technology on all aspects of society, which is conducted in over 20 countries. At the announcement of the project in June 1999, Vice President Al Gore praised Cole as a “true visionary providing the public with information on how to understand the impact of media.”

Cole was Principal Investigator of the Network Television Violence Monitoring Project which in 1995, 1996 and 1997 issued annual reports to the television networks, Congress and the nation. Over the past ten years the Center has sponsored or co-sponsored national conferences on the impact of the Internet, religion and prime time television, television and advocacy groups and images of girls in the media. Two major books have come out of the religion and advocacy conferences.

Cole has lectured extensively in Asia, Africa and Europe and throughout the U.S. He regularly consults with top government officials and leaders of the telecommunications industries throughout the world on communications issues. He currently is a member of the ITU (International Telecommunication Union) Forum Programme Committee. He was a member of the Executive Committee of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (ATAS) from 1997 to 2001 and was the founding governor of the ATAS Interactive Media Peer Group.

Over the past 29 years, Cole has taught to over 35,000 students. In 1987 he received UCLA's Distinguished Teaching Award.