Technology has changed how journalists interact with their audience — instead of having direct access via a television screen or a newspaper, modern journalists need to understand what networked press freedom is and how to navigate the algorithms inherent in a new social media landscape. USC Annenberg Associate Professor Mike Ananny researches the intersection between technology and journalism and discusses how critical it is to understand how they work together.

Why should we care about how journalists have been portrayed in media? What makes such an area worth studying? Those are the questions that Joe Saltzman, professor of journalism and communication, answers in this short video. For the past 20 years, he has studied film, television and books and has created a worldwide resource on this subject. He explains why this subject is important and what the image of the journalist tells us about the health of U.S. democracy.

What do wizards, explosions, and the world economy have in common? Dmitri Williams, associate professor of communication, researches games, online communities, technology, data and society. In this video, he details the social and economic impacts of online gaming.

A journalism class, led by Mary Murphy and Sandy Tolan, takes on the homelessness issue in Los Angeles County. Students spend the semester learning about the various issues and then do field reporting, creating stories, digital projects and videos. Their work was also featured in the Huffington Post. For more information on the project, click here.

Manuel Castells, University Professor and the Wallis Annenberg Chair in Communication Technology and Society, talks about how his research charts the new global world emerging from the communication and information technology revolution, and how globalization both connects some and disconnects others.

Courtney Cox, a PhD candidate at USC Annenberg researches the lived experiences of athletes and how global frameworks offer us new ways to think about the ways in which the exchange of culture, economy and politics can operate within this sphere.

Robert Kozinets, professor of journalism, is netnography’s inventor. In the 1990s, Kozinets, the Hufschmid Chair of Strategic Public Relations and Business Communications coined the term — fusing Internet with ethnography — and developed the research method from the ground up. A subset of digital anthropology, netnography is a systematic, ethical approach to following the millions of bread crumbs scattered in plain view across social media platforms. This video explores how he came up with the term and what it means to us.