Graduate Program

Doctoral candidate Elisabetta Ferrari has received a grant from Villanova University’s Waterhouse Family Institute for the Study of Communication and Society (WFI) to study how contemporary social movements construct discourses about technology and social change.

We know that “sex sells,” but can a dating app be manipulated to influence votes? It almost sounds too silly to be true, but leading up to last year’s general election in the United Kingdom, a network of bots used Tinder to influence the outcome.

The Jefferson Scholars Foundation has named doctoral candidate Opeyemi Akanbi one of its 2018-19 National Fellows. She will receive its Ambrose Monell Foundation National Fellowship in Technology and Democracy.

The Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University announced on Friday that Annenberg doctoral student Jennifer R. Henrichsen is among its newest cohort of Knight News Innovation Fellows.

Last week, the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange awarded Annenberg Doctoral Candidate Kecheng Fang one of its prestigious doctoral fellowships. The award of $18,000 is designed to support doctoral candidates as they complete their dissertations.

This week, eight doctoral students in Communication will begin summer fellowships with government and policy organizations, thanks to the Consortium on Media Policy Studies (COMPASS).

For more than a decade, this consortium of Communication doctoral programs has sponsored a select group of Ph.D. students to spend a summer in Washington, D.C. These COMPASS Summer Fellows have a front row seat to learn about U.S. federal policymaking as they make their own contributions to the policy process through their research and writing.

On Monday, May 14, the Annenberg School for Communication held its annual graduation ceremony for doctoral students. The celebration honored 20 graduate students who have earned or will soon earn their doctoral degrees in Communication.

Doctoral Students Stefanie Gratale and Revati Prasad received the James D. Woods Award at the 2018 Annenberg Graduation Ceremony. Given in memory of Annenberg graduate student James D. Woods, the award is granted to an outstanding graduate teaching assistant.

While it is customary to give the Woods Award to a doctoral student serving as a teaching assistant in an undergraduate course, Gratale was nominated for Professor Robert C. Hornik’s graduate class COMM 522: Introduction to Research Methods.

The Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) at Penn has awarded doctoral candidate Samantha Oliver a 2018-19 Graduate Fellowship for Teaching Excellence.

CTL Graduate Fellows are nominated for their teaching excellence by their schools or departments and then selected in a highly selective process by CTL from a strong pool of university-wide nominees. Between 10 and 14 fellows are typically chosen each year.

On April 13, Annenberg hosted its sixth annual Graduate Student Symposium. The event was organized by a student committee and featured presentations by 18 doctoral students and candidates.