In Memoriam: Osmo Wiio
Osmo A. Wiio, politician and communication scholar from the U of Helsinki, died on 20 February 2013, shortly after turning 85. He fell ill to the flu and died of complications. Wiio made significant contributions to the study of communication and was an ICA Fellow and a member of the International Communication Association for over 2 decades.
Wiio was involved in a variety of work during his lifetime. He graduated from the U of Helsinki with a master’s in political science in 1954 and received his doctorate from the U of Tampere in 1968. He taught economics at the U of Helsinki for two years before he joined the Finnish Parliament in 1975 as part of the Liberal People’s Party, of which he was a founding member. Wiio then returned to the U of Helsinki as head of the Department of Communication from 1978 to 1991.
Wiio authored many articles and books on communication. In 1974, he received the ICA Industry Award as well as the 2000 Nokia Award. Along with being a communication scholar and politician, he was a prominent Finnish radio amateur and honorary chairman of the Finnish Amateur Radio League.
Wiio had many accomplishments, but he was best known for his Wiio’s Laws of Human Communication—summarized as “Communication usually fails, except by accident.”