Research

The Media, Inequality & Change (MIC) Center is pleased to release its newest report, entitled "The Platform Economy and the Future of the City."

Digital technologies are transforming our cities — changing the ways that passengers and goods move and services are provided. They hold out the hope of numerous benefits for consumers by making transactions more efficient while increasing accessibility, variety, and convenience. However, these positive outcomes are unlikely to be realized without the right policies in place to guide their development and adoption.

Eleven Annenberg faculty members and graduate students will present at the International Association for Media and Communication Research’s 2019 Conference, to be held July 7-11 in Madrid, Spain.

The presentations are listed below. All events will be held at the Complutense University of Madrid. For the full program, visit IAMCR’s conference website.

Monday, July 8

8:30-10:00

Algorithms and Privacy

The International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) and the Urban Communication Foundation (UCF) announced earlier this week that Doctoral Student Arlene Fernández is the winner of the 2019 Urban Communication Research Grant. The prize will be officially awarded during the upcoming IAMCR conference, held July 7-11, 2019 in Madrid.

How do social media companies decide what is and isn’t allowed on their platforms? And, once they’ve established standards, how to do they go about enforcing them? These questions are at the forefront of the global conversation about technology, and the solutions require balance between protecting free speech and limiting online harassment.

Founded in 1903, the California Nurses Association (CNA) is one of the most powerful nursing unions in the country. CNA has more than 100,000 members who work in over 200 facilities. Many of these members connect their profession and their union work with social justice and have self-described socialist and/or activist leanings. Why then do the members, who are largely women, seem hesitant to connect themselves with feminism?

Ever wonder how some people seem to meet their fitness goals with ease and love eating healthy foods while other folks constantly struggle to do either? According to a new study from the Communication Neuroscience Lab at the Annenberg School, people with stronger life purpose are more likely to accept messages promoting health behavior change than those with weaker sense of purpose. And this might be because they experience less decisional conflict while considering health advice.

A new study, published in PNAS, shows that collective intelligence — peer learning within social networks — can increase belief accuracy even in politically homogenous groups.

What percentage of Americans believe in human-caused climate change?

The answer depends on what is asked – and how. In a new study, researchers at the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) of the Annenberg School for Communication found that “seemingly trivial decisions made when constructing questions can, in some cases, significantly alter the proportion of the American public who appear to believe in human-caused climate change.”

In Sub-Saharan Africa, the leading causes of death are changing. Fewer people are dying of infectious diseases like malaria or tuberculosis, but non-communicable diseases — including heart disease and diabetes — are on the rise. Things are particularly grim in South Africa, where citizens are just as likely to die from a non-communicable disease as they are from anything else.

This report was written by Aaron Shapiro (Ph.D. '18), MIC Center postdoctoral research fellow.