Professors Dan Hopkins and Yphtach Lelkes in partnership with the Center on Media, Technology, and Democracy invite applications for a Knight Postdoctoral Fellow focused on how news consumption and technology shape political attitudes.

Hello friends and colleagues–

We know you’ve all wanted to talk amongst yourselves about the great work we’ve been doing at the Penn Center on Media, Technology, and Democracy, but are stymied by the unreasonably long list of nouns in our name.

Well rejoice, as we’ve landed on an abbreviation—Penn MEDIATED. This is both a rough acronym for the Center’s name (Media, Technology, Democracy) and is (hopefully) evocative of what we study—the technologies, institutions, and individuals that mediate the information ecosystem. If you have a better idea, it’s too late, please don’t tell us what it is.

Announcing our Affiliated Faculty

Also, maybe more substantively, we’ve named our affiliated faculty! This required real consideration of what exactly we do at Penn MEDIATED—what does it mean to study the information ecosystem? Our faculty are distinguished by their rigorous empirical and computational work, but also by a focus on those mediating actors that constitute the information landscape: individuals from peers to elites; institutions of media and government; and technologies from social media platforms to large language models. 

There is so much impactful research we could mention, but just to give you a taste:

Emily Falk’s (Annenberg School) research looks at how messages affect individuals, for instance, using neuroimaging to understand why some messages are more persuasive than others. Dolores Albarracín (Annenberg School) demonstrates what interventions to change belief can actually impact people’s behavior. Diana Mutz (Political Science) discovered a significant increase in political discussions in the U.S., but no increase in conversations across the political aisle. Eric Santoro (Wharton School) examines this peer-to-peer dialogue more closely, with recent research challenging the notion that listening to those who disagree with you helps to persuade them. Matt Levendusky (Political Science) finds that disagreeable statements and opinions motivate cancel culture.

Chris Callison-Burch (Computer and Information Science) is working with Duncan Watts to monitor the evolution of TV news bias. Deen Freelon (Annenberg School) is documenting how social media platforms enable or stymie research—like analyses from Dean Knox (Wharton School), whose results find no evidence that YouTube’s algorithms radicalize users in the short-term. Shiri Melumad’s (Wharton School) work asks whether relying on LLMs adversely impacts learning outcomes as compared to using search engines.

Penn MEDIATED also welcomes John Lapinski (Political Science); Blake Miller (Political Science); Pinar Yildirim (Wharton School); Michael Morse (Carey Law); Lyle Ungar (Computer & Information Science); Dennis Culhane (Social Policy and Practice); and Dan Roth (Computer & Information Science). These esteemed faculty join the Center’s two faculty directors and six faculty advisors—you can read more on our new affiliated faculty page.

Hold the Date: Our Inaugural Conference

We are elated to announce that we will convene our flagship conference (the MEDIATED Conference? TBD) on the study of the information ecosystem and its impacts on democracy on August 24-25, 2026 in the Penn Carey Law’s Silverman Hall in Philadelphia. The conference will elevate empirical research of the media and information landscape and illuminate a path to a healthier information ecosystem and a stronger democracy. By centering empirical research, the conference will challenge assumptions widely held by advocates and policymakers about both the causes of and solutions to the information democracy crisis, enabling interventions grounded in evidence rather than anecdote. Further, the conference aspires to:

We’d love to hear from the community about how to make this an effective and impactful forum—please reach out to contact-us@infodem.upenn.edu 

Social Media

A few weeks ago, we launched a Center LinkedIn page, and just yesterday, created our Bluesky account—follow us there for new research, updates on the conference and other events, job opportunities, and likely more snark than is typically acceptable from an academic institution.

Knight Postdoctoral Fellow Posting

Political Science Professor Dan Hopkins and Annenberg School Professor Yphtach Lelkes invite applications for a postdoctoral researcher focused on how news consumption and emerging technologies shape political attitudes and behaviors. Learn more and apply here.

Penn Research Spotlight 

There has been growing concern that young people are relying on AI chatbots for companionship and social support. But is there evidence to demonstrate that  trend among young adults (18-28 years old)? New research from Professor Lyle Ungar and colleagues finds that most of Gen Z sees chatbots as a productivity tool, not a social companion. However, they also find that 23% of young adults use chatbots “as a friend” and 10% “as a girlfriend or boyfriend.

For those who are embracing chatbots for productivity, this study found that participants feared using chatbots makes people lazier and less intelligent. Are these concerns warranted? Interestingly, Wharton School Professor Shiri Melumad’s research suggests it might be. In her recent paper, Melumad conducted a series of experiments comparing LLM summaries and traditional search engines on learning outcomes, finding that participants who used ChatGPT spent less time on tasks and reported learning fewer new things about their subject. They also put less effort into creating advice based on what they learned and felt less personal ownership over their work. 

Research Compendium 

We have launched (in beta) a research compendium which curates and translates University of Pennsylvania research on the quantitative study of the information ecosystem and its impact on democracy. It brings together empirical work (so far, roughly 20 papers) examining issues such as information integrity, media ecosystems, political speech, and democratic resilience, with the aim of making rigorous academic research more accessible and actionable. 

Information & Democracy Research Grants

You can now read an overview of the 12 grant projects which strengthen the collective understanding of our information ecosystem at a moment of profound technological change and extraordinary democratic crisis. These projects make critical contributions across three key areas: unpacking how media ecosystems shape public understanding, examining AI's role as an information intermediary, and investigating communication strategies that facilitate common ground. 

New Student Employees

We’re excited to welcome new students employees:

Arzoo Gupta, Research Analyst, is working on the Center’s Research Compendium to comprehensively document information ecosystem research at Penn

Helena Zhou, Research Analyst, is contributing to annotation and NLP pipelines for advancing the computational measurement of media narratives.

Fiona Herzog, Web Designer, is helping to develop a visual brand and nicer website for Penn MEDIATED. 

Information & Democracy Research Seminar

We were thrilled to host Princeton Professor Jake Shapiro to discuss new research on the correlation between mental health and Twitter usage. On Friday, we’ll host CSS Lab Postdoc James Houghton for a workshop on running online behavioral experiments. 

ICYMI - Updates from the Broader Field

Interesting Reads:

Job Postings:

The Penn Center on Media, Technology, and Democracy is committed to independent research on the information ecosystem and its impact on democracy.

Learn more on our website, or follow us on Bluesky and LinkedIn.