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Signaling the trustworthiness of science
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

Public awareness of nuclear, refinery, and fracking sites
cooling towers of a nuclear power plant

Image: Fredography (via Unsplash)

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

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

E. Patrick Johnson (above) stars in “Making Sweet Tea,” a 90-minute film about life as an African American gay man in the southern United States. The film, which was co-produced and co-directed by Annenberg Dean John L. Jackson Jr. and Penn doctoral student Nora Gross, is based on a book Johnson wrote, which then became a play.

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

Brevity is the soul of Twitter
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

Trust in science wavers because of messaging, not method

Trust in science wavers because of messaging, not method

Kathleen Hall Jamieson of the Annenberg Public Policy Center and colleagues were cited for their research on public reception of scientific findings. “Researchers can improve the understanding of how the norms of science are honoured by communicating the value of these practices more explicitly and transparently and not inadvertently supporting misconceptions of science,” they wrote.

Who do Americans trust? The police more than Congress, study finds

Who do Americans trust? The police more than Congress, study finds

Jonathan Baron of the School of Arts and Sciences attributed greater public trust in police than in members of Congress to a “negative halo effect,” in which attitudes toward one area can negatively affect attitudes toward another. “Congress really is dysfunctional, so the negative halo extends to its members,” said Baron.

Twitter got somewhat more civil when tweets doubled in length. Here’s how we know

Twitter got somewhat more civil when tweets doubled in length. Here’s how we know

Yphtach Lelkes and Ph.D. student Alvin Zhou of the Annenberg School for Communication co-authored an analysis of Twitter’s decision to double its character limit on Tweets. “We found that doubling the permissible length of a tweet led to users posting less uncivil, more polite and more constructive replies to politicians,” they wrote.