Research

For two weeks this summer, six Annenberg doctoral students traveled to Berlin to immerse themselves in some of the most haunting episodes of modern German history: the Holocaust and the Cold War. 

Led by Barbie Zelizer, Raymond Williams Professor of Communication and Director of the Center for Media at Risk, SummerCulture is a two-week intensive research experience for Annenberg graduate students held in a different foreign country each year.

Despite the disruptions affecting journalism business models, shrinking newsroom resources, and growing local news deserts, Philadelphia residents say they are often overwhelmed with the amount of information that they get on a daily basis, according to a new report published today by The Lenfest Institute for Journalism and the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.

The University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and Rutgers University announced yesterday that they have received one of nine grants from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) new round of Tobacco Centers of Regulatory Science (TCORS). The grant is for five years and totals $18 million. As part of UPenn TCORS, Annenberg Professor Joseph N. Cappella will receive funding to study ways to correct misperceptions about the next generation of “reduced harm” tobacco products.

The National Communication Association’s 104th annual convention, “Communication at Play,” will take place November 8-11 in Salt Lake City, Utah. Below are the presentations being contributed by Annenberg faculty and graduate students, organized by date and time. Most events will take place at the Salt Palace Convention Center, although a few sessions will meet at the Hilton Salt Lake City Center.

Public health messages often tell people things they don’t want to hear: Smokers should stop smoking. Sedentary people need to get moving. Trade your pizza and hot dogs for a salad with lean protein.

For many people, these messages trigger our natural defenses. They make us feel bad about ourselves and our choices, leading our subconscious to reject the healthy encouragement.   

Social media networks, which often foster partisan antagonism, may also offer a solution to reducing political polarization, according to new findings published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences from a team led by Professor Damon Centola.

“When e-cigarette advertisements show people vaping in social settings, they tend to lead viewers to develop more — rather than less — support for vape-free policies,” says Doctoral Candidate Sijia Yang, lead author of a new study on attitudes toward vaping.

Figuring out how to make articles and videos go viral is the holy grail for any content creator. Although a magic formula remains elusive, in recent years, neuroscientists have forecasted which content will go viral by showing it to a small number of people and observing their brain activity.

Now, they’ve taken that research a step further, looking at which people are best at predicting what will go viral.

Southern Africa has some of the highest rates of sexual assault in the world, with 20 percent of adolescent girls and boys reporting that they have been forced to have sex. In many cases, they are also the perpetrators: in one survey, 12 percent of boys and 5 percent of girls admitted they have forced someone else into sex.

Given that forced sex experiences are linked to increased rates for HIV, depression, suicide, substance use, and early pregnancy — and it is a problem that spans the globe — it is an area ripe for public health interventions.

The Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication at the Annenberg School for Communication is proud to present CARGC Paper 8, “Vamping the Archive: Approaching Aesthetics in Global Media,” by CARGC Postdoctoral  Fellow, Rayya El Zein.