Desmond Upton Patton
Desmond Upton Patton is the Brian and Randi Schwartz University Professor and Penn Integrates Knowlege (PIK) University Professor of Social Policy, Communications, and Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Patton is a Social Work Scientist and Public Interest Technologist who uses qualitative and computational data collection methods to examine the relationship between youth and gang violence and social media; how and why violence, grief, and identity are expressed on social media; and the real world impact these expressions have on wellbeing for low-income youth of color. Patton is the founding Director of the SAFE lab at Columbia University, and former Associate Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. He is the recipient of the 2018 Deborah K. Padgett Early Career Achievement Award from the Society for Social Work Research (SSWR), and was named a 2017-2018 Fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society and 2019-2020 Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights at Harvard Kennedy School and a 2019 Presidential Leadership Scholar. Patton studies the ways in which youth conceptualize threats on social media, and the extent to which social media shapes and facilitates youth and gun and gang violence. In partnership with the Columbia University Data Science Institute, he co- developed a set of online tools for identifying trauma, grief and aggression in social media posts. Patton’s research on “internet banging” has been featured in the New York Times,Chicago Tribune, USA Today, NPR, Boston Magazine, ABC News, and Vice. It was cited in an Amici Curae Brief submitted to the United States Supreme Court in Elonis v. United States, which examined the interpretation of threats on social media.
Biography current as of July 1, 2022.