In an op-ed in Fortune, Sarah Kreps, the John L. Wetherill Professor of government, and Douglas Kriner, the Clinton Rossiter Professor in American Institutions, write that in attempting to fight misinformation about Joe Biden and Ukraine, social media giants Facebook and Twitter became the story.
“With the election imminent, social media platforms find themselves once again in the awkward position of being the referee deciding whether to call a penalty kick in overtime,” Kreps and Kriner write in the piece. “Especially since this summer, social media platforms have also taken the unprecedented steps of flagging and even deleting false or misleading claims by politicians, including most recently a post by President Trump claiming that COVID-19 was 'less lethal' than the flu.”
Joseph Lubeck '78, right, meets with students and Professor Ross Brann during a recent campus visit, where they spoke about Lubeck's grandfather, Morris Escoll '1916, and an essay he wrote about life as a Jewish student at Cornell.
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Photo illustration by Ashley Osburn/Cornell University
A student chronicled her life in the ’50s and ’60s—then shared those memories with her daughter and granddaughter