The Simpsons has earned a reputation for being prophetic with its uncanny predictions of the future, but when you’ve written enough stories to produce more than 800 episodes over nearly four decades, something is bound to come true — or at least that’s what Emmy-winning comedy writer Bill Odenkirk...
Nearly 69 million people in the United States speak a language other than English at home, yet weather warnings have long been issued almost exclusively in English. A new study documents how the National Weather Service is using artificial intelligence to change that, developing a...
Social media users are more likely to watch TV programs that are endorsed by members of their political party, a recent study suggests. However, individuals’ racial identity and their perceptions of racial and political ingroup norms and the demographics of a program’s intended audience also...
From Ghostbusters to Charmed, reboots, remakes, and revivals of TV shows and movies have flooded Hollywood over the last decade. A new collection of essays examines how the contemporary reboot craze perpetuates systemic biases around race, gender, and sexuality. Rebooting...
Brilliant characters often play key roles in movies and TV shows. However, when these characters are played by women and people of color, some audience members dismiss them as unrealistic, even if they portray real people and events, a recent study found.University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign...
In a ceremony hosted by the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, communication professor Travis Dixon was honored as the new David L. Swanson Professor of Communication.Dixon, whose research focuses on the prevalence and...
Communication professor JungHwan Yang, a co-principal investigator on a research project and a website that examine the informal polls about the U.S. presidential election posted on X, formerly Twitter. Yang spoke with News Bureau research editor Sharita Forrest about the project.
White people surveyed in a recent study indicated they would be more likely to confront those who post racist content on social media if their objective were to defend the norms for political discussions rather than to change the person’s prejudiced beliefs. Communication professors...
Fewer than 120,000 U.S. World War II veterans are still alive in 2023. People who lived through the war are relatively few. Why then, in an age of shortening attention spans and character limits, would a three-hour-long biopic about J. Robert Oppenheimer interest the modern audience? Although...
Barbenheimer, the portmanteau for Barbie: The Movie and Oppenheimer, captured headlines this summer. But how did two films that were seemingly polar opposites get grouped into a suggested double-header and become so inextricably linked? At face value, the only thing they share is a premiere date:...
