Leading with USC Annenberg:?Living and Coping During the Pandemic?

Our faculty, through the creation and dissemination of their work — and the public’s engagement with it — are delivering insights, challenging assumptions, and offering knowledge-based solutions to drive change. This week, I am sharing some of this incredible work with you, and hope you will share some of your own.  

In this column, I’d like to highlight some of the ways our researchers are helping make sense of the changes we are experiencing as we fight to survive the COVID-19 pandemic and manage the tectonic shifts in our daily lives — physical, emotional, cultural and economic.  

“Without preparation or our permission, we are all participating in the greatest social experiment of our time,” says Jeffrey Cole, director of USC Annenberg’s Center for the Digital Future. “Daily life is far more disrupted by the pandemic than after 9/11 or the beginning of World War II, and anxiety is at levels only seen after Pearl Harbor and the Great Depression.”  

A world renowned expert in the field of technology and emerging media, Jeff has been at the forefront of media and communication technology issues both nationally and internationally for the past three decades, and continues to break boundaries with his research today. 

According to center’s most recent national study, “The Coronavirus Disruption Project: How We are Living and Coping During the Pandemic,” 27% of us are getting more sleep, 41% are eating more, and 62% of us are feeling more anxious. As for its lasting impact — 56% of Americans say they will spend more time with their families, 42% will work more from home, and 39% will buy more online. And, no surprise here, the most trusted source in America: Dr. Anthony Fauci. 

 The report also found that TV watching is way up; 86% of Americans reported that they are enjoying catching up on TV and movies.  

 And, this is a stat I can confirm from my own experience, given how many people have reached out after seeing my segments in The Last Dance, ESPN’s 10-part documentary on Michael Jordan’s final season with the Chicago Bulls. With historic, never before seen footage and incredibly compelling storytelling, the series has become a cultural phenomenon, achieving even greater resonance in a world where sports have gone quiet. 

 Large percentages of Americans also report an increased use of communication technology, especially video streaming on YouTube, Netflix, Amazon Prime, and other services (73%), and television viewing (68%). 

 However, our ability to access video-streaming services, as well as to work, shop and attend school from home, all depend upon two things: digital devices and high-speed internet. Professor Hernan Galperin and his fellow researchers have spent several years investigating the “digital divide” in Los Angeles County.

When the recent stay-at-home mandates to minimize spread of the coronavirus forced the county’s 1.5 million K-12 students to online classes, the inequities they have observed became even more glaring. “The closure of school campuses is laying bare the disparities in household resources for effective distance learning,” Galperin notes. His team discovered that one in every four families in L.A. County lacks home internet access or a laptop or desktop computer. As reported in the Los Angeles Daily News, that leaves nearly 25,000 students — mostly minority and low-income — behind as long as school campuses remain shuttered.

The faculty-student team at Crosstown, led by Professor Gabriel Kahn, has also been using data to track the pandemic’s impact on the city and its diverse communities. After building an interactive map that allows people to chart the infection rate in their neighborhood, Crosstown traced the early spread of the disease in wealthy neighborhoods — in part because people in those areas had better healthcare and better access to testing kits. It later traced the spikes in cases in less affluent neighborhoods while those in wealthier areas were leveling off. After both reports, The Los Angeles Times followed their lead with stories of their own.  

These are just some of the ways, we are shedding light on “the greatest social experiment of our time” and the ways in which we are all adapting. I’ll have more later in the week on the ways in which our professors and researchers are engaging critically with, and supporting efforts within, journalism and other media to help surface factual and accurate information.