Penn’s Sarah J. Jackson, Presidential Associate Professor in the Annenberg School for Communication, and Duncan Watts, Penn Integrates Knowledge professor with appointments in the School of Engineering and Applied Science, the Annenberg School for Communication, and the Wharton School, have been named 2020 Andrew Carnegie Fellows by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Each fellowship carries a grant of $200,000.

The 2020 class of Andrew Carnegie Fellows includes 27 scholars. The candidates’ proposals were initially evaluated by an anonymous team of prominent scholars, educators and intellectuals, and the final selections were made by a distinguished panel of 17 jurors, including Penn President Amy Gutmann.

Dr. Jackson will trace the role of African-American media-makers in the 21st century. She will consider how today’s Black media-makers—including journalists, filmmakers, podcasters, and digital influencers—are casting light on stories that were once suppressed; sharing new stories that grapple with race and democracy; and influencing contemporary politics and policy on issues like housing segregation, educational inequality, criminal justice and voting rights. An expert in how communication constructs identity and shapes social change in American culture, Dr. Jackson studies how media, journalism and technology are used by and represent marginalized groups, with a focus on communication by and about Black and feminist activists.

Dr. Watts, a pioneer in the use of digital data to study social networks and collective behavior,  seeks to deepen our understanding of the origins, nature, and prevalence of misinformation, and its effects on democracy. Using a unique collection of datasets—including text from online news publishers; closed-caption text from local television news programs; and nationally representative panels of mobile, web, and TV content consumption—Dr. Watts and his collaborators at Penn, Microsoft Research, MIT and Stanford will study how media produce information, how people consume that information, and how it influences public opinion and understanding.