5/26
Social Media
Tech’s role in Russia’s war on Ukraine
Media scholar Courtney Radsch says tech platforms should have been faster to address Russian government propaganda, misinformation, and censorship.
Cyberattacks, Russia, and the changing face of war in the 21st century
Heli Tiirmaa-Klaar, a visiting fellow of Perry World House, shares her expertise in cybersecurity and how cyber methods are being utilized during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Combating health misinformation
A new article from Penn Nursing explains how unreliable and false health information accelerated during the pandemic, and how social media platforms amplified the problem.
How social media firms moderate their content
Wharton marketing professors Pinar Yildirim and Z. John Zhang, and Wharton doctoral candidate Yi Liu show how a social media firm’s content moderation strategy is influenced mostly by its revenue model.
What can be done to prevent and resist image-based abuse?
A virtual symposium held by Annenberg’s Center for Media at Risk and the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative brought together experts from around the world to analyze the abuse commonly referred to as “revenge porn.”
Ten years later, examining the Occupy movement’s legacy
For Jessa Lingel of the Annenberg School for Communication, a decade after Occupy Wall Street’s beginnings presented an opportunity for reflection, which she led this fall semester in a new course.
What big data reveals about online extremism
Homa Hosseinmardi and her colleagues at Penn’s Computational Social Science Lab studied browsing data from 300,000 Americans to gain insights into how online radicalization occurs, and to help develop solutions.
Anita Allen on Facebook, facial recognition, and privacy
The expert on privacy and data protection law explains why Facebook’s decision to shut down its facial-recognition system is good for privacy rights.
Social media bots may appear human, but their similar personalities give them away
A new engineering study examines how social media bots disguise themselves to interact with genuine accounts on social media platforms, while suggesting a new strategy for how to detect them.
Into the metaverse: Can Facebook rebrand itself?
Wharton marketing professor Patti Williams isn’t sold on the stated reasons behind Facebook’s recent name change— to Meta—or the timing.
In the News
Week off social media boosts mental health: Study
Melissa Hunt of the School of Arts & Sciences says that staying off social media is not the answer to internet addiction; it’s learning how to use these sites in healthy ways.
FULL STORY →
Selling Twitter to Elon Musk is good for investors. What about the public?
Jill Fisch of the Law School is quoted on the discretion but not the obligation of corporations to consider the interests of people other than investors.
FULL STORY →
Social media offers a trove of information for medical researchers
Graciela Gonzalez-Hernandez and Ashish Thakrar of the Perelman School of Medicine discuss some of the benefits of using social-media data in studies related to patient care and outcomes.
FULL STORY →
‘Kony 2012,’ 10 years later
Jonah Berger of the Wharton School said the film “Kony 2012” went viral because it tapped into basic human motivations through storytelling, social currency, and emotion.
FULL STORY →
‘Bot holiday’: COVID disinformation down as social media pivot to Ukraine
Mitchell Orenstein of the School of Arts & Sciences said the content disseminated by Russian troll farms shifts depending on Russian officials’ priorities. “They’ve had tremendous success with social media platforms,” Orenstein said. “They play a pretty substantial role, and they do shift people’s perception about what opinion is.”
FULL STORY →
Facebook researchers find its apps can make us lonelier
Melissa Hunt of the School of Arts & Sciences agreed with Facebook’s 2018 findings about the benefits of limiting social media usage. Young people who logged in for an hour or less per day “seem to have the highest levels of well-being and connectedness and are less lonely” than those who use social media much more or not at all, she said.
FULL STORY →