Communications

Emile Bruneau of the Annenberg School for Communication spoke about his research on counteracting the “collective blame” Muslims face in the U.S. Bruneau and his collaborators found asking parallel questions like “If the KKK members were white Christians, does that mean all white Christians are murderers?” caused people to switch from “thinking reflexively to thinking reflectively.”

Research by Diana Mutz of the Annenberg School for Communication and the School of Arts and Sciences found that white, highly educated people tend to be isolated from political diversity, rarely interacting with ideological opponents.

The Perelman School of Medicine’s Paul Offit wrote about efforts to stop the spread of misinformation about vaccines on social media. “Nothing educates like outbreaks,” wrote Offit.

Boaz Hameiri of the Annenberg School for Communication spoke about a study he conducted in 2014. He and his co-author found that “extreme rhetoric can lead some people to pull back from the brink” of extremism. However, if extreme messaging is normalized in political debate, its moderating effect is weakened.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson of the Annenberg Public Policy Center said Jacob Wohl is carrying on an American tradition of sowing political disinformation. “It takes a real talent to figure out what kind of deceptions will gain traction,” said Jamieson.

A new study from the Annenberg Public Policy Center found that “Jane the Virgin,” like many other English-language adaptations of telenovelas, was augmented to feature more sex and violence than the original version in order to appeal to American audiences. These changes “could in turn adversely affect its adolescent Hispanic audiences,” wrote the report’s co-authors, Darien Perez Ryan and Patrick E. Jamieson.

The Annenberg School for Communication’s Joseph Turow joined a conversation on about data mining and online privacy.