Social Media | Penn Today

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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.

‘If you want my advice, don’t take my advice.’ When the host isn’t an expert

Sigal Ben-Porath of the Graduate School of Education spoke about how information spreads outside conventional news sources. “You have a really open [media] landscape where people like Joe Rogan can hustle,” she said. “The incentive structure is built around rage rather than thoughtful engagement. At the same time, society’s values are changing. Societies are not like atomic clocks. We change and evolve over time.”

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Q&A

Ezekiel Dixon-Román on the Facebook whistleblower

The data analytics expert answers questions about Frances Haugen’s testimony and tech regulation, and why apps are so addictive.

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