Annenberg Scholars Awarded Information and Democracy Research Grants from the Penn Center for Media, Technology, and Democracy

Sixteen researchers at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania have been awarded Information and Democracy Research Grants from the Penn Center for Media, Technology, and Democracy.

Information and Democracy Research Grants support critical research contributions across three dimensions of information and democracy research: unpacking how media ecosystems shape public understanding, examining AI's expanding role as an information intermediary, and investigating communication strategies that enable persuasion and common ground

The honorees are: Presidential Professor Deen Freelon; Carolyn Marvin Professor of Communication and Sociology Sandra González-Bailón; Professor of Communication and Political Science Matthew Levendusky; Stevens University Professor Duncan Watts; Associate Professor of Communication Yphtach Lelkes; Associate Professor of Communication Andy Tan; MindCORE Postdoctoral Research Fellow Diego Reinero; Polarization Research Lab Postdoctoral Fellow Erin Walk; Computational Social Science Lab Postdoctoral Fellow James Houghton; Computational Social Science Lab Postdoctoral Fellow Amir Tohidi; George Gerbner Postdoctoral Fellow Baird Howland; doctoral candidate Neil Fasching; doctoral candidate Calvin Isch; doctoral student Vishwanath E.V.S.; doctoral student Gayoung Jeon; and doctoral student Billy Pierce.

Find more information about their projects below:

• “Interpersonal Discussions and Tipping Points in Social Networks”: This project examines how interpersonal discussions shape individuals' moral and political views and how these influences spread through repeated interactions within social networks. (Sandra González-Bailón, Diego Reinero, James Houghton)
• “Integrative experiment to explore the effect of conversation interventions on dialogue across disagreement: This project will conduct a large-scale experiment testing 21 interventions designed to improve dialogue across lines of socio-political difference and evaluate which of these are most effective at encouraging future conversations. (James Houghton, Dean Knox, Yphtach Lelkes, Matthew Levendusky, Erik Santoro, Erin Walk, Duncan Watts)
• “Information Density and Narrative Persuasion in AI Chatbots: Cross-National Evidence from India and the United States”: This project tests how conversational styles of AI chatbots (factual vs narrative based) shapes persuasion, trust and information sharing across the United States and India. (Neil Sehgal, Sharath Chandra Guntuku, Andy Tan)
• “Documenting how National News Media Depict Crime in the US”: This project uses large language models to analyze national mainstream media coverage of crime, examining which crimes receive attention, how they are framed, and what solutions are promoted. (Baird Howland, Billy Pierce, Amir Tohidi, Duncan Watts)
• “Narrative License in Science Communication in the Era of Large Language Models”: This project studies Narrative License (NL), referring to when scientific claims outrun the evidence. The researchers leverage LLMs to detect NL in published work, test its effects on readers, and also devise interventions to limit its spread in science communication. (Calvin Isch, Phil Tetlock, Duncan Watts)
• “Archiving Digital Political Advertising Content:” This project builds a comprehensive, searchable dataset of digital political ads run in the United States since 2018 to support research examining how platform policies, campaign rhetoric, and issue priorities evolve across election cycles. (Andrew Arenge, Marc Meredith, Matthew Levendusky)
• “Adversarial Testing of Misalignment in Frontier LLMs: When Asked to Create Anti-Democratic Campaign Materials”: This project will conduct adversarial testing on 19 frontier models to see how safety guardrails can be bypassed to generate anti-democratic campaign content. (Gayoung Jeon, Neil Fasching, Deen Freelon)
• “Unpacking How Context (Conversation History) Shifts the Framing of LLMs Outputs”: This project examines whether LLM-powered search systems generate responses that align with users’ preexisting political beliefs, potentially reinforcing echo chambers. (Vishwanath E.V.S, Sandra Gonzalez-Bailon)

The Penn Center on Media, Technology and Democracy (Penn MEDIATED) is committed to independent research on the information ecosystem and its impact on democracy. Its mission is to advance our collective understanding of the information landscape through cutting-edge science—then leverage that research to foster a more informed society and strengthen the foundations of democracy. It focuses on the media organizations and the online platforms, the incentives and the algorithms, that determine which ideas and beliefs spread, and which don’t. Penn MEDIATED's faculty and scholars are distinguished by their use of emerging technology for data-driven research of the information ecosystem, including novel data collections, large-scale cloud computing, and innovative applications of AI.