Press Releases

Annenberg Public Policy Center research analyzing 855 top box- office films from 1950 to 2006 shows that the portrayal of explicit and graphic suicide has tripled over that time. It also found no difference in the most explicit portrayals in films rated PG-13 versus those rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA)

Results released today from the National Annenberg Survey of Youth (NASY) indicate that although concerns about excessive Internet use may be justified, heavy use of television may be an even larger concern. In one of the most extensive national surveys of media habits over a two-year period, six different types of media use were identified

Although athletics is a healthy and popular extracurricular activity in American high schools, it also has its risks. The recent poker craze among adolescents in the U.S. was driven largely by interest in poker play among high school male athletes, a just-released analysis of adolescent gambling in the National Annenberg Surveys of Youth (NASY) indicates.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has awarded APPC $200,000 to begin work on a multi-phase project that seeks to advance knowledge about effective uses of health communication and disseminates its findings through a dynamic website. APPC scholars will begin by producing a series of reports that assess the strengths and limitations of the major theories

A controlled experimental study of over 5300 smokers conducted by the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) posted to the FDA comment website (http://www.regulations.gov/#!submitComment;D=FDA-2010-N-0568-0006) today shows that multiple versions of the proposed warnings produce desired effects by increasing negative feelings respondents experience about smoking a next cigarette. “By failing to study the labels’

Results released today from the National Annenberg Survey of Youth reveal that 1 out of 7 or 14% of adolescents and young adults have experienced being a victim of cyberbullying (see Table 1 below). Those who experience cyberbullying report higher rates of thinking seriously about suicide in the past year (see Table 2 below). The

Phyllis Kaniss, Ph.D., executive director of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, a longtime teaching faculty member at the Annenberg School for Communication, died Friday, December 17, after a long battle with cancer. She was 59-years-old.   Dr. Kaniss is the author of Making Local News (University of Chicago Press, 1991) and The

Recent coverage of Bernard Madoff’s son’s suicide violates evidence-driven media guidelines jointly developed by the CDC, NIMH, the Surgeon General, SAMHSA, two suicide prevention foundations and the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. Specifically, research suggests that explicit description of a method increases the likelihood that vulnerable individuals will kill themselves using

On December 6, APPC sponsored a focus group of 12 local voters moderated by veteran pollster Peter Hart and held at the Policy Center on the University of Pennsylvania campus. During the session the group – which consisted of 10 Philadelphia-area residents who voted for Obama in 2008 but for a Republican candidate in the

An analysis by Annenberg Public Policy Center researchers Sharon Sznitman and Dan Romer shows that international and U.S. state differences in the emotional well-being of adolescents are strongly related to their overall levels of academic achievement. In addition, these differences are strongly related to levels of poverty at the national and state level. The article