Erica Rosenthal

Erica Rosenthal is the Director of Research at the USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center. She came to the Lear Center in 2011 and led research for the Hollywood, Health & Society program for more than seven years. Currently, she oversees the Lear Center's and the Media Impact Project's portfolio of research focused on understanding media narratives and studying their impact on audiences' knowledge, attitudes, and behavior. She has worked a wide range of topics including health equity, economic mobility, immigration, reproductive rights, sexual health, gender-based violence, and more. She has a PhD in social psychology from Claremont Graduate University and 20 years of experience studying the impact of media and communication initiatives on health and public interest issues. Her graduate research examined the barriers emotional messages pose to media literacy, and the central role of trust. She has published on the power of storytelling in both scholarly journals and popular media and speaks on the social impact of media and storytelling.

Contact Erica here.
The Norman Lear Center's Media Impact Project researches how entertainment and news influence our thoughts, attitudes, beliefs, knowledge and actions. We work with researchers, the film and TV industry, nonprofits, and news organizations, and share our research with the public. We are part of the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.