Joe Saltzman and his IJPC team expand their Image of the Journalist in Popular Culture project reach with their latest research and report on “The Image of The Journalist in Silent Films, Part One: 1890-1919,” available in the current IJPC Journal.
INVESTIGATING RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN WOMEN’S NEWS PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION
Women are underrepresented in newsrooms and are less likely to read political and international news, but when a newsroom closes the gender gap, does it result in a higher share of women in their audience? Newspaper Engagement Strategist Alyssa Zeisler investigates the relationship between women in news production and their consumption in this case study.
Producers of the EPIX series America Divided conducted an innovative engagement campaign to spur action against social injustice and invited the Lear Center’s Media Impact Project to determine if their documentary series inspired real social change. Spoiler alert: It did! This report outlines key strategies to success and areas of improvement that could be applied to other documentary media projects.
The Great ShakeOut, the largest earthquake preparedness drill in the history of the United States, first took place in 2008 and offered the Lear Center a chance to study and assess how people participated and whether audience segments shared behavioral patterns. Our online survey revealed four clusters of participants: Minimal, Basic Drill, Community-Oriented and Interactive and Games. Our full, peer-reviewed report on our findings has just been published and the take-away should inform all future disaster prep campaigns. READ IT NOW.
Read this transcript of the remarkable conversation about media, news, fake news and the 2016 election that took place at the 2017 Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Television Political Journalism. The panel featured Jorge Ramos, Jake Tapper, Katy Tur and Brian Stelter, and was moderated by Lear Center Director Marty Kaplan.
At the awards event in 2005, Cronkite warned that “it’s going to be, to a large degree, up to us in television and radio, in broadcasting” to equip Americans “to perform the act of intelligently selecting our leaders…. If we fail at that, our democracy, our republic is, I think, in serious danger.”
The Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Television Political Journalism encourages and showcases substantive and innovative coverage that informs viewers about their electoral choices.
This new study from USC Annenberg PhD Candidate Traci Gillig, Hollywood, Health & Society‘s senior researcher Erica Rosenthal, USC Annenberg professor Sheila Murphy and HH&S director Kate Folb, is among the first to explore how entertainment narratives depicting transgender individuals influence viewers’ attitudes toward transgender people and related policies. Numerous studies have demonstrated the power of entertainment narratives to influence attitudes and behaviors; fewer have examined the effects of TV portrayals on attitudes toward marginalized groups. The present study examines the impact of exposure to a TV storyline on Royal Pains (USA Network) and cumulative effects of viewing other TV series featuring transgender individuals.
READ THE FULL REPORT HERE. | Read an article from The Conversation about the report.
In this trenchant dialogue with Lear Center Director Marty Kaplan, MIT’s professor Sherry Turkle – scholar and critic of technology’s impact, public intellectual and recipient of the 2017 Everett M. Rogers Award — discusses her current research about the effects on human relationships of digital technology, including the personal computer, social networks, mobile connectivity and artificial intelligence. Turkle has described technology as the “architect of our intimacies,” and her work has explored how digital communication devices affect the ways we understand ourselves, relate to others and experience our humanity.
The Spring 2017 Real to Reel spotlights stories about depression and pregnancy, a genetic link that might hold the key to ending the opioid epidemic, the U.S. nuclear command-and-control center at Cheyenne Mountain, and a Southern Christian doctor who believes the abortions he provides are rooted in justice.
READ: The latest Real to Reel newsletter from Hollywood, Health & Society includes articles on the horrific Tuskegee Study; five plausible scenarios set in the year 2045 for reaching the goal of eliminating nuclear weapons (from a joint effort by N Square, an initiative to stimulate nuclear disarmament); and the moving story of Olympian Diana Nyad’s attempt to swim 100 miiles from Cuba to Florida at the age of 64.
Key Findings from Research in Nigeria:
A Report to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
June 2016
An effort by Hollywood, Health & Society, Nollywood Workshops, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation led to the development of Code of Silence (CoS), a mainstream Nollywood film tackling issues of rape and gender equality, which premiered in Nigeria in August 2015. This report outlines preliminary evaluation findings from research investigating the impact of the film on attitudes toward rape and gender equality.