USC Graduate School

How many TikToks have you made during quarantine? Meet So Yun Ahn (USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism), Christina Shin (USC Viterbi School of Engineering), Laboni Bhattacharya (USC School of Cinematic Arts), and Becky Pham (USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism). Their research takes a deep dive into the new world of TikTok. Here’s what they said about their project:

TikTok is the fastest growing social media platform in the world with more than two billion app downloads in the year 2019. Yet, it has been often neglected as a lip-syncing app for teenagers than as an important domain that suggests the future of social media and its implications. This paper aims to unpack what TikTok enables, which is a complex creative negotiation with personal, cultural and political identity through the simple act of performing for the camera. This paper takes three avenues of exploration: TikTok’s affordances that allow youth to produce trendy audio-visual content, its AI-powered content distribution algorithm that fosters a dynamic environment, and social media’s dominant discourse of “self-expression” that ostensibly rewards authenticity with fame.

Learn more about their research at our virtual tomorrow 1pm-4pm on our Instagram account ()! .

TOMORROW is our annual ! The symposium showcases innovative and cutting-edge communications research conducted by USC’s Ph.D. students. This year, we have made the accessible for everyone! Learn, comment, and engage with our presenters between 1pm-4pm on our Instagram account () as we post presentations every 10mins. We’ve been giving a sneak peek of some of the amazing research conducted by our Annenberg Fellows leading up to the symposium. Meet Sierra Bray (USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism), Olivia González (USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism), and Emily Reed (USC Viterbi School of Engineering). Here’s what they said about their research:

“In recent years, news outlets have increasingly covered the obstinate underrepresentation women face in the technology industry. As of 2019, women held less than a quarter of technical roles at Google, Facebook, Apple, and Twitter—statistics circulated by Forbes, Vox, and WIRED, among others. However, scholarship has yet to examine whether media messages about women’s underrepresentation in tech has unintended, pernicious effects on readers, such as escalating gender biases that frame women as unfit for tech jobs. Therefore, by employing a mixed-methods study with a quantitative experiment and qualitative interviews, we explore whether negative media framings of women’s representation in tech hinder young women’s career aspirations in the tech industry.”

Learn more about their research tomorrow, April 23! .

It’s time for another student spotlight! We will be virtually hosting our annual on our Instagram account () on April 23, 1pm-4pm. Meet USC Viterbi School of Engineering student Nikolaos Flemotomos. Here’s what he had to say about his project:

“Psychotherapy is a process in which psychological problems are treated through communication between an individual and a trained mental health professional. Problems helped by psychotherapy include not only specific mental disorders, such as depression or anxiety, but also difficulties in copying with everyday life. With the growing prevalence of psychological interventions in modern societies, it is vital to have measures which rate the effectiveness of psychological care providers, in order to assist training, supervision, or quality assurance of services. As interventions based on spoken language, the necessary information for assessing psychotherapy quality is encoded in therapists’ and clients’ speech and language characteristics. Thus, quality assessment is traditionally addressed by human raters who evaluate recorded sessions along specific behavioral codes, a cost-prohibitive and time-consuming method which leads to poor feasibility in a real-world scenario. In collaboration with researchers working in the clinical field, we have developed an automatic competency rating tool which gives comprehensive feedback to the therapist.”

Learn more about Flemotomos’ research on April 23! .

Join us for our virtual on April 23rd on our Instagram account (). The symposium showcases innovative and cutting-edge communications research conducted by USC’s Ph.D. students. This year, we have made the accessible for everyone! Learn, comment, and engage with our presenters between 1pm-4pm, as we post presentations every 10mins. Today we’re highlighting the work of USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism student Emily Sidnam-Mauch. Here’s what she said about her research:

“While smartphones afford users consistent access to valuable communication and information resources, many people experience negative outcomes from this constant connection. Research has connected mobile phone distractions with notable costs, such as: decreased relationship satisfaction, decreased safety, efficiency, and learning in the workplace, poor academic outcomes, poor sleep quality, and physical harm. While there is a growing body of literature on smartphone distractions and related consequences, less is known about how specific applications contribute to smartphone distraction behaviors. This study contributes to the current literature on distraction and communication technologies by exploring the role mobile social media play in smartphone-related distraction behaviors and consequences.”

Learn more about her research on April 23! .

THIS WEEK we will be hosting our annual ! The symposium showcases innovative and cutting-edge communications research conducted by USC’s Ph.D. students. This year we will be hosting the symposium virtually on our Instagram account () on April 23, 1pm-4pm. Meet Philana Payton (USC School of Cinematic Arts) and Perry Johnson (USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism). Here’s what they had to say about their research: “This collaborative presentation considers the ways in which the ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ has incidentally relayed multiple meanings to disparate audiences depending on the performer, their particular rendition, and the time period. Looking specifically to Whitney Houston’s historic 1991 anthem performance—one of the most celebrated of all-time, we examine Houston’s iconicity at the time, in relation to the concurrent shifting definitions of blackness, soul, and authenticity.” Learn more about their research on April 23! .

We are officially a week away from our annual USC Annenberg Graduate Fellowship Research & Creative Project Symposium. This year, the will be hosted virtually our Instagram account () on April 23, from 1pm-4pm. We are so excited to share with you the great research our Annenberg Fellows have conducted. Leading up to the we will be spotlighting our students, giving a sneak peek of their research.

Today, we’re spotlighting Ignacio Cruz, a PhD student at USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Cruz’s research focuses on narrative persuasion in job advertisements. Here’s what he said about his research: “Job advertisements are one of the first pieces of company information applicants use to cybervet, or evaluate whether they are a fit for a position. This study explores how job ads presented in narrative, storytelling forms influence a job seeker’s perceived person-organization fit and intent to apply for a company. “ Learn more about Cruz’s research on April 23! .

SAVE THE DATE! The USC Annenberg Graduate Fellowship Research & Creative Project Symposium is returning this spring! This year the symposium will be hosted on the Graduate School's Instagram account at on April 23rd. Join us virtually to see the amazing research the Graduate Fellows in USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, USC Viterbi School of Engineering, and USC School of Cinematic Arts are working on. Projects will be posted every ten minutes between 1pm - 4pm. Feel free to engage and ask questions in the comments section of each project. Hope to see you there!

The Graduate Women's Writing Group scheduled to meet tomorrow and on March 26th is canceled.

Find more updates on COVID-19 from the University of Southern California here: https://sites.usc.edu/coronavirus/.

NEW month, NEW events! We have exciting things in store for March, including University of Southern California's "Beyond the PhD Conference" with USC Career Center (RSVP at https://sites.usc.edu/beyondphd) . Check out our list of events in the picture below. We hope to see you there!

to our Deck Our Halls Open House Reception in February. We've been enjoying the new student artwork displayed on the walls of our offices in STU and got to open our doors to students and faculty to show it off!

Student artists had the chance to see their work displayed and talk about it with fellow students. University of Southern California Provost Chip Zukoski also stopped by to chat with some of the creators.

If you are a USC Graduate Student and want the chance to see your work displayed on these walls, keep an eye out for the Deck Our Halls application during fall semester.

Networking... it's not always easy but it is important! Next week, join us for a PhD Pathways Career Planning & Preparation Workshop on networking designed to get you feeling comfortable and inspired.

Please note, this event will be at HSC.