Communications

Emily Falk of the Annenberg School for Communication spoke about self-transcendence and behavior modification. “If you let people first ‘zoom out’ and think about the things and people that matter most to them,” said Falk, “then they see that their self-concept and self-worth aren't tied to this particular behavior–in this case, their lack of physical activity.”

Kathleen Hall Jamieson of the Annenberg Public Policy Center was featured for her new book, Cyberwar: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President—What We Don’t, Can’t, and Do Know. “I’m not arguing that Russians pulled the voting levers,” she said. “I’m arguing that they persuaded enough people to either vote a certain way or not vote at all.”

The Annenberg School for Communication’s Victor Pickard discussed conservative news channel Newsmax and its recent deal with Comcast. If Comcast is “feeling the heat from the right, it will make sense to appease some of those critics,” said Pickard.

Damon Centola of the Annenberg School for Communication discussed the counterintuitive results of information exchanges across political party lines on social media. While one might think that stepping outside one’s echo chamber would improve understanding, Centola found that “communication in a highly polarized context increases polarization.”

Damon Centola of the Annenberg School for Communication and the School of Engineering and Applied Science led a team of researchers studying the impact of visible political logos on social learning.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson of the Annenberg Public Policy Center discussed sensationalist newspapers’ effects on the 2016 election. “You might say nobody reads the tabloids, but actually most of us do—through inadvertent exposure,” she said.

Writing in The New York Times, Joseph Turow of the Annenberg School for Communication shared his findings on internet users’ misperceptions of online privacy policies.

The Annenberg Public Policy Center’s Kathleen Hall Jamieson weighed in on the difficulty of parsing out fact from fiction or opinion in journalism and social media. “I don't blame the public for being confused,” she said.