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On the screen of a tablet (l), the website of the Russian TV channel RT can be seen. On the right, the screen of a smartphone shows the official Twitter account of Ukrainian President Selenskyj

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.

‘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.

‘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.”

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.

Hands holding smartphone with thumbs poised over screen getting ready to type something.

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.”

Social media on phone with content being erased by a large pencil.

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.

Person looking at laptop computer, visibly concerned.

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.

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