Arts, Humanities, & Social Sciences

A researcher in protective clothing and gloves gathers a water sample from a river.

Signaling the trustworthiness of science

Public confidence in science has remained high and stable for years. But recent decades have seen incidents of scientific fraud and misconduct, failure to replicate key findings, and growth in the number of retractions—all of which may affect trust in science.

Penn Today Staff ・

African American person sitting in a wooden chair, feet up on a wooden table that holds a ball jar filled with sweet tea.

Seeing life through their eyes

Through the voices and stories of seven men, a feature-length documentary co-produced and directed by Annenberg Dean John L. Jackson Jr. and graduate student Nora Gross illustrates what it means to be black and gay in the south.

Michele W. Berger ・

cooling towers of a nuclear power plant

Public awareness of nuclear, refinery, and fracking sites

Just over half of the U.S. adults living within 25 miles of a nuclear site say they do, according to the new study of proximity and risk perceptions from the Annenberg Public Policy Center. The more risk that people thought the nuclear, refinery, and fracking sites posed, the less likely they were to report that they lived near one.

Penn Today Staff ・

Six conversation bubbles with hashtags

Brevity is the soul of Twitter

A new study from the Annenberg School for Communication finds that the 280-character limit makes Twitter more civil.

Penn Today Staff ・



In the News


BuzzFeed.com

Andrew Yang injected Silicon Valley’s favorite economic idea into the Democratic debate. Silicon Valley isn’t so happy about that

Amy Castro Baker of the School of Social Policy & Practice said universal basic income is looking increasingly possible now that it’s been embraced by the tech world. However, she cautioned, “if we move forward, but without the science of knowing how to best implement, we could create other forms of inequality.”

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MarketWatch

As Democrats spar over guaranteed jobs, universal basic income and $15 minimum wage, which would best help Americans?

Ioana Marinescu of the School of Social Policy & Practice said that, in an ideal world, universal basic income would better improve the lives of Americans than a $15 hourly wage. The former is “a more ambitious plan, for sure, and therefore the rub is the cost,” she said.

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TheHill.com

Poll: Most Americans say they trust Supreme Court

A new survey from the Annenberg Public Policy Center found that 68% of U.S. adults have faith in the Supreme Court, and 70% said the court has “about the right amount of power.” However, 57% of respondents said it can get too “mixed up in politics.”

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Vanity Fair

Leading neurocriminologist considers Joker “a great educational tool”

PIK Professor Adrian Raine discusses the new film “Joker” and how it might be used to teach criminology. “It’s really hard to get a true-life story that fits all of these pieces together, let alone a very dramatic and stylized movie that illustrates these factors quite strongly,” he said. “That was really a revelation.”

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MarketWatch

Lalo Alcaraz, a cultural consultant for the Oscar-winning ‘Coco,’ helps Disney and Nickelodeon avoid lazy stereotypes

Américo Mendoza-Mori of the School of Arts and Sciences consulted for Paramount Pictures on the script for “Dora and the Lost City of Gold.”

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