Decoding Language of Grief and Joy in Digital Life

Desmond Patton is the 31st PIK University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, with joint appointments in the School of Social Policy & Practice and the Annenberg School for Communication, where he is the Waldo E Johnson Jr. Professor of Communication. He also holds secondary appointments in the Department of Psychiatry at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia & Perelman School of Medicine. He is founding director of SAFElab, founding faculty director of the Penn Center for Inclusive Innovation & Technology, and Chief Strategy Officer for the School of Social Policy & Practice. Professor Patton’s groundbreaking research examines the relationship between social media and gun violence, grief, and loss, focusing on how online communities influence offline behavior. His work has made him the most cited and widely recognized scholar in this critical area of social science. Early research focused on detecting trauma and preventing violence on social media has evolved into broader investigations of language analysis and algorithmic bias in artificial intelligence. He currently serves as a member of Spotify’s Safety Advisory Council, the Ethics and Equity Advisory Council (EEAC) at Axon, TikTok’s U.S. Content Advisory Council, and is a trusted advisor to several AI startups. As a social work scientist, Patton identified that traditional data science methods often fail to capture the cultural and linguistic nuances of predominantly Black and Hispanic youth. In response, he developed the Contextual Analysis of Social Media (CASM) framework, which integrates culture, context, and inclusion into machine learning and computer vision analysis. He is also pioneering a new research agenda on joy, developing a practical and theoretical framework for integrating joy into AI model development as a tool for equity, imagination, and human connection. Dr. Patton is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, an Obama Foundation USA Leader, a Mozilla Rise 25 Change Agent, a Presidential Leadership Scholar, and one of RockHealth’s Top 50 in Digital Health. Links: Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Decoding Language of Grief and Joy in Digital Life is an episode from No Such Thing: Education in the Digital Age by Marc Lesser.

This episode is 56:09 long.

This episode was published on Feb 6, 2026.

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