This doctoral-level, academically based community service (ABCS) research seminar empowers local youth in West Philadelphia to identify, research, and address pressing community issues through evidence-based communication strategies. Working directly with Sayre High School partners, graduate students will co-develop research questions and communication campaigns that matter most to youth and their communities. While topics may include climate change, health, violence prevention, or other community concerns, the specific focus will be selected in collaboration with youth partners. Through learning about strategic messaging, social media engagement, and school/community outreach campaigns, students will develop an intervention in groups to foster meaningful community change. The course involves both scheduled seminars and required fieldwork at Sayre High School. Drawing on frameworks from communication theory, behavior change, and Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR), students will engage in hands-on projects that empower youth voices and enable community action through communication. Graduate students will learn core theories about behavior change relevant to communication interventions and YPAR. They will gain experience designing and implementing a multi-method or mixed-methods study, combining qualitative with quantitative research techniques to conduct formative research, message design, and testing in partnership with youth. Through this project, students will develop proficiency in data analysis, interpretation, and presentation of findings. The course will also cover ethical and practical considerations in youth-centered research, relationship building, community engagement strategies, and effective facilitation skills. This course provides a unique opportunity for doctoral students to gain practical experience in participatory research while addressing pressing social, environmental, or health issues in the West Philadelphia community.
How are adolescents represented in media and what effects do these portrayals have on developing teens, including in the context of climate change? What makes adolescents a “jackpot market” to be targeted by advertising, and how can they be swayed by mediated efforts to encourage health-promoting and pro-climate behaviors? What does the increasingly mediated nature of everyday life mean for adolescents, their friends, and their families during their journey into adulthood amidst a climate crisis? We will explore these questions by reading key empirical studies and by critically analyzing film, public service announcements, and climate change-related media portraying and/or targeting adolescents from the 1950s to the present day.
This course will focus on understanding the multiple ways in which climate science is communicated to publics and how they come to understand it. In the process, we will explore ways to blunt susceptibilities to misconceptions, misconstruals, and deliberate deceptions about climate science. Forms of communication on which the class will focus include consensus statements, manifestos, commentaries, court briefs, news accounts, fact checks, op-eds, letters to the editor, speeches, and media interviews. Students will have the opportunity to interact with guest lecturers, among them leading journalists, climate activists, and climate survey analysts. Students will write letters to the editor and fact checks and will participate in mock interviews designed to increase their understanding of the nature of the interactions between journalists and climate scientists. As a class project, students will collaborate on a white paper on climate discourse fallacies to be distributed at the April 3-7 Society for Environmental Journalists annual convention (hosted by the Annenberg Public Policy Center and the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability, and Media). Students will interview attendees at that conference as part of the class project.
This course will focus on understanding the multiple ways in which climate science is communicated to publics and how they come to understand it. In the process, we will explore ways to blunt susceptibilities to misconceptions, misconstruals, and deliberate deceptions about climate science. Forms of communication on which the class will focus include consensus statements, manifestos, commentaries, court briefs, news accounts, fact checks, op-eds, letters to the editor, speeches, and media interviews. Students will have the opportunity to interact with guest lecturers, among them leading journalists, climate activists, and climate survey analysts. Students will write letters to the editor and fact checks and will participate in mock interviews designed to increase their understanding of the nature of the interactions between journalists and climate scientists. As a class project, students will collaborate on a white paper on climate discourse fallacies to be distributed at the April 3-7 Society for Environmental Journalists annual convention (hosted by the Annenberg Public Policy Center and the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability, and Media). Students will interview attendees at that conference as part of the class project.