Research Networks
Since its founding, the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania has been a leader across a wide range of interdisciplinary fields. This breadth of scholarship — one of the School’s defining strengths — is reflected in our Research Networks.
By bringing together scholars across disciplines, methods, and areas of expertise, these networks create a shared intellectual infrastructure that fosters connection rather than isolation. Each network centers a vital domain of inquiry while remaining grounded in the School’s broader commitment to rigorous, socially engaged research.
Health Communication
Health Communication explores how communication shapes health behaviors, outcomes, and systems at every level, from individual decision-making to public understanding. Scholars examine issues such as health equity, misinformation, and public health messaging, with the goal of improving how critical information is created, shared, and understood. This research has a direct implication for well-being and quality of life, all in the pursuit of a healthier, happier, more informed world.
Politics, Policy, and Institutions
Politics, Policy, and Institutions turns to the communication dynamics that shape governance, civic engagement, and democratic participation. Researchers in this area study not only how information flows influence public opinion, policymaking, and institutional trust, but also how norms of news production, struggles over visibility and representation, media ownership and policy regimes, and movement-based communication shape whose voices are heard. By connecting insights across fields, this research strengthens understanding of the communication forces that underpin political and policy environments.
Cultural Inquiry
Cultural Inquiry examines the meanings, identities, and power relations that circulate through everyday life. Scholars explore how culture is produced, represented, and contested across media and social contexts, asking how communication shapes what societies value, normalize, or challenge. In doing so, this research offers critical insight into the cultural dimensions of communication and their broader social consequences.
Computational Social Science
Computational Social Science leverages data-driven methods to the study of communication at scale. Bringing together expertise in analytics, technology, and social science, researchers analyze digital environments, social networks, and emerging media systems. This research expands the methodological toolkit of communication research while generating new insights into complex social phenomena.
Connected Research
Taken together, these Research Networks highlight both the diversity of inquiry at Annenberg and the shared sense of purpose that connects it. For example, artificial intelligence and climate communication are defining challenges of our moment, and scholars across all four networks approach these challenges in complementary ways. Our work within and across networks reflects Annenberg's commitment to research that is rigorously interdisciplinary and relevant.
These research networks make visible the School’s distinctive ability to bridge ideas, methods, and communities in ways that advance scholarship and address the most pressing issues of our time.