USC

University of Southern California
Annenberg School for Communication


Research

Research Areas

Photo

In the projects early days, we focused on understanding forces in the everyday lives of communities that make them places where residents are or are not engaged in building community. We learned the importance of geo-ethnic and new media in a global world. We learned how features of the communication environment directly affect the vitality of the neighborhood storytelling network. The events of 911 gave us an opportunity to examine these elements under crisis conditions. In our studies of the Internet, we learned that new media should not be studied in isolation from the larger communication ecology of old and new ways of communicating. While these themes remain important parts of our studies, we have expanded our focus to include the role of families and children and a variety of pressing concerns related to health literacy and health disparities.

- Civic Engagement
- Crisis Communication
- Geo-ethnic Media
- Families & Children
- Globalization
- Health Communication
- Communication Environment
- Communication Ecology and ICTs