Social Work LIVE: Desmond Patton and Social Media Communication of Grief/Trauma
Join our Facebook LIVE series every Wednesday at noon, with host Michael Friedman.
This week Professor Friedman will be interviewing Dr. Desmond Patton about social media communication of grief/trauma and possible interventions (more details below).
REGISTER to receive a reminder as well as a link to the stream shortly after the program begins (the link isn’t generated until we go live). Alternatively, you can go to CSSW’s Facebook page at noon. The stream will appear as the first post on the page.
About This Week’s Guest
Professor Desmond Patton (bio) leads the SAFELab research initiative focused on the ways youth of color navigate violence. While working with gang-involved youth in Chicago, he noticed that their social media exchanges sometimes spill out into violence on the streets. He assembled an interdisciplinary research team who use artificial intelligence to study social-media posts for emotional patterns. What researchers found was a pattern of grief leading to aggression. By developing tools to recognize these signs, Patton hopes to help community organizations intervene before digital fights turn deadly. His team also experiments with using virtual reality to teach young people how to navigate social media and limit their exposure to violence.
About the Host
Michael Friedman is a social worker with over fifty years of experience in mental health and public policy. He has chaired, founded, or directed numerous city and state agencies and published approximately 200 articles, chapters, and essays, including a parody, The Diagnostic Manual of Mishegas. Since retiring he has continued to teach at the Columbia School of Social Work and to write about mental health, aging, and other topics at www.MichaelBFriedman.com and in a column for MedPageToday. He is also a semi-professional photographer and jazz pianist.
Questions?
Please contact swcommunications@columbia.edu. Stay tuned for our list of further guests for the remainder of the semester.
