Social Media

Meta’s Threads takes on Twitter

Meta’s new social platform, Threads, is off to an impressive start, but can it continue its initial success against Twitter? Wharton’s Pinar Yildirim weighs in.

From Knowledge at Wharton

Why COVID misinformation continues to spread

Penn Medicine’s Anish Agarwal discusses why false claims about the virus and vaccines arise and persist, plus what he hopes will come from NIH-funded research he and Penn Engineering’s Sharath Chandra Guntuku have recently begun.

Michele W. Berger

Is social media good or bad for social unity?

Annenberg professors Sandra González-Bailón and Yphtach Lelkes reviewed all of the previous literature to determine what scholars have discovered to date.

From Annenberg School for Communication



In the News


The New York Times

An epidemic of vicious school brawls, fueled by student cellphones

PIK Professor Desmond Upton Patton says that many schools don’t have a playbook for addressing student violence or helping pupils engage more positively online, in part because few researchers are studying the issue.

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Stat

Social media misinformation is scaring women about birth control

In an opinion essay, postdoc Emily Pfender of the Leonard Davis Institute and Perelman School of Medicine cautions that social media can set back women’s health by perpetuating fear and misinformation instead of empowering informed choices.

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ABC News

Can Harris ride memes all the way to the White House?

Pinar Yildirim of the Wharton School says that people who vote for the Democratic Party tend to skew younger, which makes them harder to reach through traditional media.

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Philadelphia Inquirer

After the Great Valley social media scandal, we must balance free speech with ‘digital citizenship’

Jonathan Zimmerman of the Graduate School of Education writes that school districts must listen to what students have to say in order to craft good policies around online student speech.

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Newsweek

There is one major element missing from the debate on kids and social media

In an opinion essay, PIK Professor Desmond Upton Patton says that gun violence needs to be part of the conversation about how smartphones and social media impact young people.

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The Washington Post

AI fake nudes are booming. It’s ruining real teens’ lives

Doctoral candidate Sophie Maddocks in the Annenberg School for Communication says that AI fake nudes are targeting girls and women who aren’t in the public eye.

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