About Us

“Every human advancement or reversal can be understood through communication. The right to free communication carries with it responsibility to respect the dignity of others – and this must be recognized as irreversible. Educating students to effectively communicate this message and to be of service to all people is the enduring mission of this school.” (The Honorable Walter H. Annenberg October 16, 1958)

Publisher, diplomat, and philanthropist Walter Annenberg wrote those words when he founded the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.

Throughout the past five decades, the Annenberg School for Communication has remained true to the mission articulated by Ambassador Annenberg, while responding to changes in both the nature of communication as a social process and in Communication as a discipline. Today we advance our mission through four central goals:

• Producing and disseminating cutting-edge scholarly research designed to advance the discipline’s theoretical and empirical understanding of the role of communication in public and private life.
• Producing and disseminating high-quality applied research designed to advance the public’s understanding and effective use of communication, and policy-makers’ ability to create a media environment that fosters the personal and collective development of its citizens.
• Educating doctoral students in the theories, substance and methods of communication research and placing them in leading academic and professional positions in the field.
• Providing a first-class liberal arts education to undergraduates, designed to help them become better consumers and producers of public information, strengthen their understanding of the role of communication in their personal, professional and civic lives, and prepare them for private and public-sector leadership positions in communication-related and other fields.