Research - News Literacy Initiative

Research Grants

Penn State's News Literacy Initiative's vision includes funding in the form of grants awarded to full-time faculty and staff in pursuit of research, projects, and materials that strengthen news literacy across the Commonwealth.

Penn State Harrisburg as the pilot site for this Commonwealth Campus grant, with the schools of Humanities and Public Affairs and the Madlyn Hanes Library are sponsoring this grant program at the college.

We envision Penn State as a vital resource for citizens of the Commonwealth in understanding how to assess and consume news and reject misinformation, especially on current issues related to health and science and the environment.

Marie Hardin, dean of the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications

Eric Best, assistant professor of homeland security and public policy, and Dan Mallinson, assistant professor of public policy and administration, both with the School of Public Affairs, were awarded $7,000 for “News and Numeracy: Improving Understanding of Quantitative News and Journalism.”

Their project will focus on numeracy by training students to understand quantitative news pieces and data journalism, through activities including integrated lesson planning across multiple courses, library engagement and a lecture series.

Nakho Kim, assistant professor of communications with the School of Humanities, was awarded $6,000 for “Local News Literacy: Dashboard to Detect Gaps in Local News Agenda.”

Kim plans to develop a dashboard tool to draw communication data from diverse sources and visualize the local news agenda, highlighting gaps.

Kimberly Schreck, professor of psychology with the School of Behavioral Sciences and Education, was awarded $7,000 for “Mixed Messages in the News: Choose the Best and Mute the Rest (the Sequel).”

Schreck will replicate and extend a previous study that evaluated news transcripts and found that news networks often reported and sometimes implicitly recommended pseudoscientific and sometimes harmful treatments for autistic individuals.