“Technology alone won't be able to solve major societal challenges”

“When AI and social media are your fields of teaching and research, you’ve got to stay on top of your game,” says Gatica-Perez, an EPFL adjunct professor and head of the Social Computing Group at the Idiap Research Institute (of which EPFL is a founding member). “The technology evolves so quickly that you often find yourself one chapter behind instead of two chapters ahead.” He admits that one of his biggest challenges is “keeping up with the latest technological, scientific and regulatory developments. Sometimes, I end up learning about a new digital platform from my students!”

Yet this role-reversal doesn’t bother Gatica-Perez – on the contrary. “My teaching feeds into my research,” he says. The daily contact with digital natives gives him a first-hand look at how digital technology is used in practice, and “preparing my lectures forces me to remain immersed in the material.”

Very modern and very cross-disciplinary

Gatica-Perez holds a master’s degree in communication systems engineering, which he obtained in Mexico, as well as a PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Washington. He currently heads EPFL’s master’s program in digital humanities. He also teaches a Computational Social Media class, which he aims to make as interactive as possible.

“My students and I pick apart the huge social media platforms like X, Instagram and TikTok,” he says. Not to mention Facebook, “which we analyze from the perspectives of history, sociology, psychology, ethics and law.”

His class “exposes engineering students to a range of disciplines. Technology is a key element, but it’s not necessarily the most important one.” Instead, he feels the priority is to “give these young people insights for addressing the challenges arising from social media.”

For many students, Gatica-Perez’s class is the first time they’re encouraged to think critically about what they read in the scientific literature. That’s especially tricky considering that many of the articles are very recent, “meaning there’s room for speculation,” he says. The class also includes quite a bit of group work on concrete projects. “Students are free to pick the topic for their projects – it just has to be related to social media.” For instance, one project looked at how candidates in the recent French presidential election used TikTok. “Another one examined the debates that took place on social media about pandemic-related issues,” he says.

Humans as important as machines

Gatica-Perez gives his students a lot of latitude, but this also comes with responsibility. “It’s essential for students to be able to speak freely in an environment where they feel safe and respected,” he says. “At the start of each semester, we create a safe space for student discussion with objectives that are clearly explained.” As students feel increasingly reassured and comfortable speaking up, they “become more engaged and demonstrate a remarkable amount of energy and creativity.” What Gatica-Perez finds particularly gratifying is seeing students make the link between science and society: “That’s exactly the kind of engineers we need today – especially in the fight against climate change.”

When it comes to research, Gatica-Perez’s work similarly aims to help make the world a better place. “Our projects at the Social Computing Group take societal conditions and people’s individual experiences into account. We give humans just as much importance as machines.” Here, he gives the example of the Corona Citizen Science initiative in which professors from EPFL and the University of Lausanne (UNIL) developed a participative, cross-disciplinary website that residents of Switzerland could use to share their experience during the pandemic. Another example is a study his research group carried out with the UNIL Institute of Psychology to examine how influencers are able to spread health-related information.

More recently, “we’re seeing that the owners of social media platforms are playing an increasingly pivotal role in politics, whether by changing their content verification policies or spearheading government initiatives,” says Gatica-Perez. “This underscores the fact that social networks are much more than collections of algorithms and are far from neutral. People really need to understand that technology alone won’t be able to solve major societal challenges like global warming and public health.”