Faculty

The faculty of the Annenberg School for Communication are heartbroken by the senseless killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and all those who are victims of police brutality. Black Lives Matter.

Health communication scholar and Annenberg alumnus Andy Tan will join our faculty as an Associate Professor on July 1.

David Lydon-Staley, a scholar of message effects, begins as assistant professor of Communication at the Annenberg School on July 1.

In keeping with Annenberg tradition, former dean Michael X. Delli Carpini has named his endowed faculty position after someone he admires: Professor Emeritus Oscar H. Gandy, Jr. (MAC ‘70), who taught at the Annenberg School from 1987 to 2006.

Want to know whether competition or comradery encourages people to exercise more? Or how many people it takes to start a revolution? Then Damon Centola — who was recently promoted to full professor at the University of Pennsylvania — is your go-to person.

This article originally appeared on Penn Today and was reposted with permission.

You’d be hard pressed to find someone who would disagree that American politics are highly partisan. Partisanship has been on the rise since the 1970s, and the consensus among the media seems to be that political polarization has skyrocketed since the beginning of the campaign season for the 2016 presidential election.

Public confidence in science has remained high and stable for years. But recent decades have seen incidents of scientific fraud and misconduct, failure to replicate key findings, and growth in the number of retractions — all of which may affect trust in science.

Many users thought doubling Twitter’s character limit from 140 characters to 280 could only make the platform more prone to bullying. But a new study, led by Professor Yphtach Lelkes, found that the average quality of conversation improved.

Platforms like Uber and Care.com are radically changing the way we view labor, and many people are wondering what the future of work will look like. How will technology and the gig economy continue to shift the conditions of work? What can we do to make conditions better, rather than worse, for workers?