Communications | Penn Today

Line of protesters dressed as characters from The Handmaid’s Tale holding protest signs

Do liberals make moral connections through pop culture?

When people are trying to communicate complicated ideas that hinge on morality, argues Megan Genovese, they turn to pop culture as a point of commonality in the absence of a Christian theological framework.

The White House coronavirus briefing dilemma

Lori Robertson of the Annenberg Public Policy Center joined a conversation about how the press is handling coverage of the White House Coronavirus Task Force briefings.

a person sits at a desktop computer at home watching a work video conference

How to defend your virtual meeting from uninvited, malicious guests

As ‘Zoombombing’ becomes widespread, Penn’s Office of Information Security provides tips on staying secure.

A reporter and a cameraman wear protective clothing and masks while reporting on the coronavirus from the field.

Journalists brave danger to report on coronavirus

Barbie Zelizer, director of the Center for Media at Risk at the Annenberg School for Communication, says there are four types of dangers journalists are facing while reporting on COVID-19.

Zoombombing: What it is, and how to stop it from ruining your coronavirus events

Jessa Lingel of the Annenberg School for Communication spoke about how online gatherings can be protected from disruptions by trolls. “Just like people should be updating their Facebook settings, just like people should be thinking about location data that they put on Twitter or Instagram, we should also be thinking about the settings of a platform like Zoom,” she said.

An opened bottle of ibuprofen will pills laying in front.

Ibuprofen does not worsen COVID-19, reports FactCheck.org

FactCheck.org disproves the idea that ibuprofen or other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs can make COVID-19 cases more severe.

Pre-coronavirus TV commercials make us cringe; new ads reflect a time of threat

Joseph Turow of the Annenberg School for Communication spoke about the shift in advertising since the pandemic began. “Americans think fun is being with people,” he said. “Those commercials now reflect a world that passed so fast. Hugging looks so strange now.”

Russian trolls politicized vaccines in 2016. Could coronavirus be next?

A study about online misinformation and public health authored by Kathleen Hall Jamieson and postdoc Yotam Ophir of the Annenberg Public Policy Center was cited. “It seems like the coronavirus is consistently being framed as a political issue,” Ophir said. "The virus doesn’t work this way. You get it whether you’re a liberal or a conservative.”

The fate of the news in the age of the coronavirus

A new book by Victor Pickard of the Annenberg School for Communication was cited. In it, Pickard argues that the government should fund a public media system to the tune of $30 billion, which “may seem large, but relative to the scale and type of problem—a first-order need on par with public health, a standing military, and other non-negotiable expenses, it is actually a modest proposal,” he writes.

In pandemic, word definitions shift and new lexicon emerges

Kathleen Hall Jamieson of the Annenberg Public Policy Center spoke about the use of jargon in public health communications. “They are incomprehensible to many in the public,” she said. “Public health officials need to translate their technical language into intelligible language.”

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