Digital Platforms and Public Health

Special Issue guest editor: Thomas Krendl Gilbert

Current landscape of digital platforms

Digital platforms are at a crossroads. Twitter/X, dramatically changed in content and character since Elon Musk’s takeover in fall 2022, today faces several competing services, including BlueSky, Threads, and Mastodon. While this has provided much-needed choice, the user interfaces of these platforms remain largely interchangeable, defined by the same key feedback modalities (news feed, comment, like, repost). Also unaddressed is how matching algorithms can be developed that demonstrably support desirable social outcomes.

Challenges in social media assessment

Existing methods of assessment such as content moderation seem necessary yet insufficient to address the structural problems that define these platforms. Fragmentation, poor mental health, and political polarization remain critical vectors of the social media experience. Meanwhile, the explosive growth of generative AI applications may be a second opportunity for forward-thinking, design-first policymaking. New policies are being proposed in the US, UK, and EU, but there is a pressing need for alternative conceptual frames and research methodologies.

Call for special issue submissions

This special issue of Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences frames the development of societal-scale digital platforms in terms of interlinked public health problems. Today’s technologies seem to exacerbate problematic social conditions, necessitating methods to measure, evaluate, and improve population well-being. This is a topic closely linked to The New York Academy of Science’s long, venerable history, echoing periods in the 19th and 20th centuries when population health crises prompted scientists to address the broader public dimensions of social ill.

We are inviting rolling submissions on this topic, covering the subfields and methodologies outlined below. Submissions can include literature reviews, commentaries, empirical research, or some combination of the above.

Please contact Thomas Gilbert and Douglas Braaten at annals@nyas.org for more information or an inquiry about submitting.

Potential/relevant subfields and methodologies