Events
Democratic Repercussions of Media Fragmentation
On October 21st, 2025, the Center hosted its first public event: The media landscape continues to experience fragmentation, with an ever-expanding number of political influencers, podcasters, online platforms, and generative AI systems – all while traditional mass media has become more ideologically aligned. This event brought together leading media scholars to explore how media fragmentation is contributing to American democratic decline.
Read more in the coverage from the Daily Pennsylvanian.
Information and Democracy Research Seminar
The Center on Media, Technology and Democracy is hosting a research seminar speaker series start in 2025-2026 academic year, where leading faculty will present on the empirical science of the information ecosystem and its impact on democracy. This seminar series is open to PhD and Postdoctoral students as well as faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, who are interested in the empirical study of the information ecosystem. Interested Penn-affiliated scholars can reach out at contact-us@infodem.upenn.edu
Knight Fellow and Penn Postdoc Amir Tohidi presents the working paper “Falsehoods Offer No Persuasive Advantage Over Selective Facts” at the September 12th kickoff of the Information & Democracy Research Seminar.
Executive Director Alex Engler introduces the mission and goals of the Center on Media, Technology and Democracy to our new community of PhD and Postdoctoral students during the September 12th kickoff.
Amy Gutmann Hall
The Center is located in Amy Gutmann Hall: Penn’s new center for data science and artificial intelligence.