Dr. Danna Young
Dannagal G. Young (Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication, 2007) is a Professor of Communication and Political Science at the University of Delaware where she studies the content, audience, and effects of nontraditional political information. She has published over sixty academic articles and book chapters on the content, psychology, and effects of political information, satire, and misinformation [Go to CV]. Her book Irony and Outrage: The Polarized Landscape of Rage, Fear, and Laugher in the U.S. examines satire and outrage as the logical extensions of the respective psychological profiles of liberals and conservatives (Oxford University Press, 2020: here). Her new book, Wrong: How Media, Politics, and Identity Drive our Appetite for Misinformation was published in Oct 2023 with JHU Press.
Dr. Young's 2020 TED Talk explaining how our psychology shapes our politics, and how media exploit these relationships, has been viewed over 1.9 Million times. She publishes extensively in the popular press with essays and Op-eds in outlets including Vox.com, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic. She has appeared on CNN, PBS Newshour, ABC News, NPR, and various national and international podcasts. As of 2020, her research has been cited in over 70 popular press articles, news stories, and interviews at such outlets as The Washington Post, USA Today, Politico, Christian Science Monitor, Variety, the New York Times, the Atlantic, PBS, Slate, and Vox. Her popular University of Delaware course "Propaganda and Persuasion" was released by The Great Courses in 2023. In recognition of her public facing work, in 2021, Dr. Young became the inaugural recipient of the Dr. Robert M. Entman Award in Democracy and Political Communication from the School of Media and Public Affairs (SMPA) at The George Washington University.
Young is a Research Fellow with the University of Delaware's Center for Political Communication and was awarded the University of Delaware's Excellence in Teaching Award in 2014. She holds affiliations with the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center and the University of Arizona's National Institute for Civil Discourse (NICD), where she co-edited of "A Crisis of Civility: Political Discourse and its Discontents" (Routledge, 2018).
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Check out Dr. Young's curated book recommendation list she created for Shepherd.com: The Best Books to Understand Identity-Driven Wrongness in the U.S.
Young is creator and host of Dr. Young Unpacks, a playful, high energy, informative talk show produced by CSz Philadelphia that dives deep into the psychology of media, politics, and popular culture.
Together with Jonathan Gray (University of Wisconsin), Young co-edited the volume Breaking Boundaries in Political Entertainment Studies (2013). She is cofounder (with Matthew Baum at Harvard) of vMOBilize.org, an online voter mobilization game that capitalizes on social networks and gaming theory to engage politically disengaged audiences in the political process. During the 2012 election, she worked with FlackCheck.org to to debunk inaccurate political claims through satire and parody.
Danna grew up in New Hampshire and graduated Summa Cum Laude from the University of New Hampshire in 1998 with a double major in Political Science and French. She moved to Philadelphia in 1999 to pursue her Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication. Danna has been a professor at the University of Delaware since 2006.
She is also an improvisational comedian, performing regularly with the improv comedy troupe, ComedySportz Philadelphia, since 1999.
Danna lives outside of Philadelphia with her husband and their two children.
