Faculty

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?

As the 2019-2020 school year begins, nine new visiting scholars and nine new postdoctoral fellows are joining the Annenberg School for Communication and our various research centers. These scholars will research alongside and collaborate with Annenberg faculty, staff, and students for anywhere from one semester to several years. We are thrilled to welcome them!

As Professor of Communication, Psychology, and Marketing and director of the Communication Neuroscience Lab, Falk uses imaging techniques like fMRI to unlock the unconscious and hidden dynamics in the brain that shape our thinking.

At the 69th Annual Conference of the International Communication Association (ICA), Professor Barbie Zelizer was awarded the 2019 B. Aubrey Fisher Mentorship Award, one of ICA’s top honors.

The award recognizes outstanding scholars, teachers, and advisors who serve as role models in those capacities and who have had a major impact on the field of Communication. Recipients of the award must also have influenced the discipline through their former students, who themselves are important figures in Communication.

Currently an associate professor at Northeastern University, Jackson will join the Annenberg School faculty in July.