News from the Annenberg School for Communication
January 5, 2012
In this issue:
Upcoming events - MLK Lecutre in Social Justice, more
FlackCheck.org, described (in a tongue-in-cheek manner) as the “second cousin, once removed” to FactCheck.org, debuts today. FlackCheck uses rates political communication by turning it on its head with humor to point out inaccuracies and deceptions. You can see the growing library of FlackCheck.org videos at its web site. Also, FlackCheck has already been extensively covered by the news media, including National Public Radio, Marketplace Radio Tech Reports, OnTheMedia.com, The Plain-Dealer (Cleveland, OH), and Miller-McCune.com.
Joseph Turow, Ph.D., the Robert Lewis Shayon Professor of Communication, talks about his new book, The Daily You: How the New Advertising Industry is Defining Your Identity and Your Worth (Yale University Press, 2011) in an interview with The Philadelphia Inquirer. Publishers Weekly said of the book “[Turow’s] position on the digital age is generally positive, but the ethical and social implications of personal information being used by companies to determine who is a 'target' and who is 'waste' have him worried: 'We have a serious social problem,' Turow (Niche Envy) says, referring to the results of this new media information gathering phenomenon as 'social discrimination,' since its effectiveness is based on valuating an individual's potential worth to a particular company or political campaign. Turow examines the psychological consequences of this surreptitious information gathering, and asks the crucial question: '[W]hat, if anything, can you do about it?'"
In late December, Prof. Turow talked about the research that led to the book at a University of Pennsylvania “Engaging Minds” event.
The book was reviewed recently in the StarTribune.com. A quote from the review reads as follows: “The Daily You … provides an important and urgent reminder that in our excitement over the benefits of new technologies, we run the risk of ceding influence over forces essential to protecting and promoting autonomous decision making to an industry interested only in activating our buying impulses.”
Klaus Krippendorff, Ph.D., the Gregory Bateson Professor for Cybernetics, Language, and Culture, delivered the keynote address at a conference on “Practice-Based Research in Art and Design” at the Bauhaus University in Weimar, Germany.
Prof. Krippendorff also published the paper, “Human-centered design: A cultural necessity (edited reprint of “A Trajectory of Artificiality and new Principles of Design for the Information Age”) in the journal Collection 3 (Ecole Parsons a Paris, 2011).
Sharrona Pearl, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Communication, has been elected as a member of the Royal Historical Society. Prof. Pearl also received a small junior scholar’s grant from the National Science Foundation.
Victor Pickard, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Communication, was an honors scholar at Muhlenberg College.
Peter Decherney, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Cinema Studies and English at Penn, was named a secondary faculty member at Annenberg.
The Iowa Caucuses may have taken place on Tuesday of this week, but the 2012 Presidential Campaign has been a hot topic in the news for months. Annenberg’s Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Ph.D., the Elizabeth Ware Packard Professor of Communication and Director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, has frequently been a “go to” source for the media as they churn out copy on the campaign. A brief roundup of stories where her insights can be seen here.
Ongoing turmoil growing from the so-called Arab Spring and the use of social media therein continues to spark media interest, and therefore generates interviews with Marwan M. Kraidy, Ph.D., Professor of Communication. He talked about the Arab Spring in a recent interview with CNN.com. Prof. Kraidy also talked to Marketplace Radio about a sizeable investment in Twitter.com made by a Saudi prince. While on leave conducting research in the Middle East, Prof. Kraidy sat down for an interview with Al-Jazeera English for a "Year in Review" story.
Alumni Jennifer Stromer-Galley (Gr ’02), Kate Kenski (Gr ’06), Rosa Mikeal Martey (Gr ’06), and Adrienne Shaw (Gr ’10) have received a grant to develop video game to train adults how to overcome critical decision-making biases.
Doctoral student Ryan Paquin published in Health Communication.
Doctoral student Matthew A. Lapierre published in Media Psychology.
Doctoral student Piotr Szpunar published in Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism.
Doctoral student Khadijah White has been invited by the Social Science Research Council to contribute to a new digital forum on the Occupy Wall Street and the broader occupy movement. You can read her initial contribution to the effort here. She also was interviewed by The Philadelphia Inquirer for a year-end story about social media and its role in protests.
Alumna Ann Sceia Klein (Wharton ’64, ASC ’65) honored by the Philadelphia Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America.
January 17 – 11th Annual Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Lecture in Social Justice (co-sponsored by Annenberg), featuring political strategist and commentator Donna Brazile. Zellerbach Theater beginning at 5:30 p.m.
February 8 – Book talk by Prof. Joseph Turow – 6 p.m. at the Penn Bookstore.
February 17 – Noon time colloquium by Eric Klinenberg – Noon in Room 500.
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