2026 George Gerbner Lecture in Communication Delivered by Michael Serazio

The 2026 George Gerbner Lecture in Communication at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania was delivered by Annenberg alum and current Professor and Chair of the Department of Communication at Boston College Michael Serazio (Ph.D. ‘10). 

His lecture, based on his latest book “The Authenticity Industries: Keeping it ‘Real’ in Media, Culture, and Politics,” explored the preoccupation advertisers, influencers, and politicians have with being perceived as authentic. However, this “authenticity is not actually real,” Serazio said, “and this book is a study of how that mirage gets made.”

As part of his research, Serazio spoke to U.S presidential campaign teams, Fortune 500 brand executives, and entertainment industry gatekeepers. By peeking behind the curtain, he found that, in the twenty-first century, across the board, media makers are prioritizing the “realness” of their content. 

“Advertising receded from view even as paradoxically it became more ubiquitous than ever,” Seraizio said. Whether that means a cheaply produced vertical video shot on a phone, or a brand ambassador who appears to be acting as their “true self” — it remains a way to hawk a product, an ideology, or a personality.

“Authenticity might seem natural, uncontrived, innate, but that's because it's been orchestrated as such. This is media work that labors to look effortless,” Serazio said. 

Serazio sees this as a response to both “nihilistic capitalism,” where we seldom find ways to experience ourselves sans commodities, and also emerging technologies: “The more virtual our everyday experience becomes, the more the machines overtake our lives, the more that AI is forced upon us — the more we crave authentic alternatives.”

This phenomenon is evident in tabloids, with their familiar refrain that celebrities are “just like us”; in reality television, which foregrounds intimate conflicts, emotional displays, and candid confessionals; in contemporary politics, whether in Donald Trump’s unapologetically anti-political correctness rhetoric or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s informal Instagram livestreams; and on social media, with lower production values, unfiltered spontaneity, mistakes, and off-kilter angles. 

At the same time, platforms have implemented native ad structures to blend advertising content and “real” content seamlessly. Advertisers have been advised to be unfiltered, not overly polished. “You don't want to come off as overly commercial, even though you are — that, of course, would be inauthentic.” 

As a result, these media forms permeate our lives in countless consequential ways. “It shapes the scope of our ideas and values. It gives rise to our political and societal potentials, and it helps define parameters of our identities and realities,” Serazio said. Authenticity acts as a way we can self-actualize; our marketplace choices end up feeling “chosen by, not chosen for.”

Now, in a world where AI industries want to argue they can “speak on our behalf,” Serazio concluded, this becomes even more important to consider. “Outputs that seem inauthentic now,” he said, referencing phenomena like AI homework assignments and chatbot girlfriends and boyfriends, “will cease to be stigmatized as such in the future.”

But, in this climate, Serazio pointed our attention to the most important thing: that is, attention itself. “The media industries…have designs on one quality above all: our attention. And coincidentally, that also happens to be the only superpower we have that actually matters.” 

Serazio’s first book, which began as his dissertation, gave its attention to a similar subject. In “Your Ad Here: The Cool Sell of Guerrilla Marketing,” published in 2013, he analyzed the covertness of commercial advertising, and the hidden persuasion of their efforts. “If that project taught me anything, it’s that advertising is geographically imperialistic. The best place to put an ad is where one does not exist already. And the best type of ad to place is one that does not look like it exists there,” he said.

The covertness of media persuasion, in fact, is a mainstay in Serazio’s research. His book “The Power of Sports: Media and Spectacle in American Culture,” published in 2019, examined the messages that sports are able to surreptitiously spread about inequality, patriotism, labor, and race. “Because they appear to be above politics, being massively popular forms of escapism,” Serazio said, “sports are uniquely positioned to spread potent messages to large audiences.” 

By examining sports from this angle, Serazio uncovers a narrative of technological upheaval, commercial greed, widening economic inequality, militaristic fervor, and constructed ideals of masculinity through dozens of in-depth interviews with prominent figures in sports media, journalism, and the business and marketing sides of the industry.

A former journalist himself, Serazio has also written essays for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Vox, and other media outlets. His scholarly work has been published in journals such as the Journal of Communication, Media, Culture & Society, and the Journal of Consumer Culture. 

About his time at Annenberg, Serazio said, “I am extremely grateful for Annenberg and the selfless dedication of its faculty members. I think back to the ideas around media and culture that were animated here for me, and to the professional opportunities and lifelong friendships that Annenberg afforded to me.”

The George Gerbner Lecture in Communication was established in honor of George Gerbner, Annenberg’s longest-serving dean, who led the School from 1964 to 1989. During his tenure, he launched both the Ph.D. program and the undergraduate Communication major and shifted the School’s focus toward the theory and research of the social and institutional aspects of communication. The lecture is typically delivered by an Annenberg School alumnus in recognition of Gerbner’s lasting contributions to the School and the field of communication.