Profile

In 1980, Sharon Black was working towards her Master’s in Library and Information Science at Drexel University while dating a “wild-haired” drama graduate student at Temple. “We both loved theater,” she recalls — so when she saw a position for a part-time desk clerk at the Annenberg Library, she applied. 

“I thought, ‘What would be cooler than a job in a theater library?’” Black presumed she’d be interviewing at the Annenberg Performing Arts Center, when in fact the position was with the Annenberg School for Communication.

Drawing on her background in media studies and fan studies, Genovese is studying how pop culture references provide leftists a way to connect to one another and build solidarity around political and social issues, in lieu of using religious arguments.

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.

Doctoral student Muira McCammon studies the intersection of technology, law, and military policy. She’s on the quest to understand how people and data move through the Guantánamo Bay detention center.

Former CARGC postdoctoral fellow Maria Repnikova studies culture and communication in China — and all the many contradictions associated with the country.

Doctoral student Roopa Vasudevan is a data artist who finds creative ways to tell stories about online hate speech, political communication, access to birth control, and more.

Apple or Android? Nearly everyone prefers one over the other, and companies spend millions of dollars to construct appealing brands that aim to resonate with how their target users may see themselves or aspire to be seen.

A fourth year graduate student at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, Danny Kim studies the branding of media products, and he says that this principle is also relevant to media preferences. We like movies, TV shows, music, and other media products that represent or reflect who we are or who we want to be.

We know that “sex sells,” but can a dating app be manipulated to influence votes? It almost sounds too silly to be true, but leading up to last year’s general election in the United Kingdom, a network of bots used Tinder to influence the outcome.

When best friends and then-high school sophomores Bevan Cohen and Sabrina Epstein started snapping photos of their lunches around New York City, it just seemed like fun to post them to Instagram. They had no idea that they were on the road to becoming full-fledged Instagram influencers. But 3,700 photos and 313,000 followers later, @eastcoastfoodies has become a trademarked brand.