Norman Lear Center


	BrandSpace is an interdisciplinary project that explores the way new practices, imaginations and politics are being created within commercial brand culture. Embracing faculty, students, marketers, cultural critics and brand managers, BrandSpace will investigate the "new" media and commercial environments and identify challenges and possibilities they present.

	Celebrity, Politics & Public Life is devoted to a more critical understanding of the connections among celebrity, culture and political life. Activities include interdisciplinary faculty seminars, public events, film screenings, a museum exhibition and a book titled Warners' War: Politics, Pop Culture & Propaganda in Wartime Hollywood.

	Creativity, Commerce & Culture explores the impact of digital technology and intellectual property law on innovation and creativity in arts and entertainment. The project has published original research and produced groundbreaking events on Fashion & the Ownership of Creativity; Artists, Technology & the Ownership of Creative Content, and The Tyranny of 18 to 49.

	The Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Television Political Journalism encourages and showcases television journalistic excellence in political coverage, particularly innovative, issue-focused coverage that informs viewers about their electoral choices. The award recognizes coverage that helps viewers understand who the candidates are, what the issues are, and how the electoral choices will affect their lives. This includes providing candidates with opportunities to explain their platform and views about governing.

	Declaration of Independence Road Trip was founded to take an original copy of the Declaration of Independence on a three-and-a-half year tour across the country. Producer Norman Lear acquired this Dunlap broadside in 2000 with the goal of bringing it directly to the American people. The project has evolved into Declare Yourself, a nonpartisan voter registration campaign.

	Entertainment Goes Global explores the implications of the globalization of entertainment. This project contains the program American Soaps Abroad that studies the effect of health storylines in American soaps on international audiences. For more information about this project, read our report, Entertainment Goes Global: Mass Culture in a Transforming World.

	Entertainment News Archive is a searchable bibliography of articles on every facet of entertainment, from film, TV, and radio to art, advertising, and fashion. The Archive contains thousands of articles on entertainment from over 300 print and Web publications. The Archive allows a researcher to generate a bibliography on a specific entertainment topic in seconds.

	Faculty/Student Research Grants provide funding to faculty and graduate students across the University of Southern California campus. Grants have funded several entertainment-related projects and courses, including a survey of MP3 use, the Aibo project, and a comparative report on music and fashion.

	Historians, Journalists and the Challenges of Getting It Right, a partnership of the Lear Center, USC Annenberg's Center for Communication Leadership & Policy, and the American Historical Association's National History Center, begins with the premise that both professions are in the business of finding and assessing evidence; of analyzing events; and of narrating events. Both are storytellers and could enhance their work by sharing expertise and practical knowledge about media and methods.

	The Grand Intervention project launched in July 2005, when the Lear Center and the Los Angeles Times asked the public to submit ideas for the new 16-acre park on Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles. Since then, the Lear Center has attempted to maximize public input into the design of the park by using new technology to expand the outreach process.


	Hollywood, Health & Society is a program that provides entertainment industry professionals with accurate and timely information for health storylines. Funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, The California Endowment, and the Health Resources and Services Administration's Division of Transplantation and Poison Control Program, the program recognizes the profound impact that entertainment media have on individual knowledge and behavior.

	The Image of the Journalist in Popular Culture, led by Professor Joe Saltzman from the Annenberg School of Journalism, investigates conflicting images of the journalist in film, television, radio, commercials, cartoons, and fiction. Saltzman's book, Frank Capra and the Image of the Journalist in American Films, was published by the Lear Center Press and can be purchased at Amazon.

	Journeys in Film has been a leading force in global education for over a decade. This project combines the power of moving and provocative films with the highest quality standards-based lesson plans to inspire and engage students in learning and it prepares teachers to effectively integrate film into core educational standards.

	The Lear Center Local News Archive, funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, produces an unprecedented nationwide look at the news media Americans experience during campaigns, in response to the decline in quality of broadcast political coverage and the negative effect this has on democracy overall.

	Measuring Media's Impact centers on an innovative new survey instrument developed by the Lear Center that measures the impact of a film on viewers’ knowledge, beliefs and behavior. The first in a series of surveys studied 2010 Oscar® nominee Food, Inc. and found that very similar viewers, with an equal likelihood to see the film, had significantly different eating habits and food shopping habits based on exposure to the film.

	Media, Citizens & Democracy is a joint project of The Norman Lear Center and the Council for Excellence in Government funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The primary activity of the project is to develop an effective message and communications strategy that will engage citizens, especially young Americans, in government and democracy, through the examination of the portrayal of government and public service in entertainment media.

	Politics & Entertainment Surveys is a partnership between the Norman Lear Center and Zogby International to measure public political and entertainment preferences through a series of surveys begun in summer of 2007.

	Popular Music Project provide funding to faculty and graduate students across the University of Southern California campus. Grants have funded several entertainment-related projects and courses, including a survey of MP3 use, the Aibo project, and a comparative report on music and fashion.

	Star Maps is an in-depth examination of the many factors -- from the geographical to the economic to the social -- that are instrumental in producing culture. This project takes a detailed look into the inner workings of cultural production, seeking to understand the networks of people who make decisions about which kind of culture is channeled to the markets and the public, and which is not.