Communications | Penn Today

A pile of old family photographs and documents.

What do our ancestral family ties say about our political beliefs?

A new study from the Annenberg School for Communication finds that the stronger your ancestral family ties, the more likely you are to hold right-wing cultural policy preferences.

Many young women wouldn’t get flu, COVID shots in pregnancy, poll suggests

A report co-authored by Kathleen Hall Jamieson of the Annenberg Public Policy Center finds that higher percentages of women aged 18 to 49 doubt the safety and effectiveness of COVID and flu vaccines during pregnancy.

Scholarship beyond the written word

Ethnomusicologist Juan Castrillón, the inaugural Gilbert Seldes Multimodal Postdoctoral Fellow at the Annenberg School for Communication, is on a quest to get other academics to see multimedia work as he does: on par with scholarly text.

Conspiracy theories can be undermined with these strategies, new analysis shows

Kathleen Hall Jamieson of the Annenberg Public Policy Center says that counteracting conspiracy beliefs is important because belief in conspiracies can encourage people to act in harmful ways.

Penn’s SAFELab sits at the intersection of technology and social work

PIK Professor Desmond Upton Patton, founder and director of the SAFELab, discusses the initiative’s research on grief, gun violence, and social media as well as its new space at the Pennovation Center.

A person’s hand holding a pen filling out a paper survey.

How to protect the integrity of survey research

Surveys provide a scientific way of acquiring information that inform policy and help society understand itself. In a new article, 20 experts from diverse fields offer a dozen recommendations to improve the accuracy and trustworthiness of surveys.

The influencer industry is having an existential crisis

Emily Hund of the Annenberg School for Communication advocates for the unionization of influencers and online creators in her new book, “The Influencer Industry.”

Philly residents still wary about drinking tap water

PIK Professor Dolores Albarracín discusses Philadelphia’s plan for communicating with residents about the water crisis.

Q&A

Climate scientist Michael Mann makes a home at Penn

Known for his “hockey stick” graph that hammered home the dramatic rise of the warming climate, the climate scientist is now making his mark on Penn’s campus, both through his science and his work on communicating the urgent need for action on the climate crisis.

Suicide rates start spiking in spring, this is why and how to get help

Dan Romer of the Annenberg Public Policy Center explains how misinformation about the “holiday blues” leading to increased rates of suicide can cause damage.

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