Cinema & Media Studies

Does Electoral College end election for conservative media?

Brian Rosenwald of the School of Arts & Sciences said conservative media are shaped by their audience’s preferences. “As conservative media proliferated, it put a lot more pressure on the hosts to move to the right and embrace warfare politics,” he said. “If they don’t, they get accused of selling out. This is a business.”

Closeup of person holding a smartphone with a news article on the screen.

Google News prioritizes national media over local

A new study from the Annenberg School for Communication found that Google News prioritizes national media outlets over local media outlets in search results, even when users are searching for local topics.

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Media’s reporting on gun violence does not reflect reality

A new study looks at media reports in three cities and finds half of victims were covered in the news, but a disproportionate amount of attention was given to less common circumstances and victims.

Black family watching television, two children lying on the carpet, two parents on the couch behind them.

TV ads for psoriasis and eczema medications portray few people of color

A Penn Medicine study finds commercials from pharmaceutical companies advertising medication to treat psoriasis and eczema lack people from racial and ethnic minorities.

Want to change Hollywood culture? Stop using classic movie formulas

PIK Professor John Jackson Jr. authored an op-ed about how clichés in filmmaking oversimplify complex issues like racism. “A truly diverse and inclusive Hollywood will need the courage to forsake many of the classic formulas that it believes audiences require for the grandest stories it tries to tell,” he wrote.

Young woman wearing mask in movie theater

In TV and cinema, pandemic lays out a field of unknowns

Penn experts in Cinema & Media Studies and the Wharton School weigh in on how television and film are adapting alongside the pandemic.

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Q&A

Cancel culture on the silver screen

Iconic films like the 1939 blockbuster “Gone With the Wind” are being scrutinized in light of the Black Lives Matter movement against racial injustice. Cinema studies’ Meta Mazaj says framing films within context is more valuable than erasure and disclaimers.

Conservative media helps Trump perform ‘law and order’ in Portland, with risks for November

Kathleen Hall Jamieson of the Annenberg Public Policy Center spoke about media coverage of the federal crackdown in Portland, Oregon. “The framing of this is dramatically different news channel to news channel, and this is an instance in which the visuals are difficult to understand because you’re seeing people in what look to be a kind of military uniform, and it’s unfolding at night,” she said.

Reality replaces virtual reality

What was supposed to be a cinema and media studies course to create virtual reality films on the Philadelphia Museum of Art collections became individual films by the students about the realities and connections to the pieces they researched.

Scholarship through the lens of an iconic media brand

A new Annenberg course centered around HBO offered undergrads hands-on exposure to media production and a chance to hone their analytical skills using primary source materials.

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