John P. Wihbey is an Associate Professor of Media Innovation and Journalism at Northeastern University, where he serves as a Faculty Co-Director at the Institute for Information, the Internet, and Democracy (IIID) and Director of the AI-Media Strategies Lab (AIMES Lab). He is a Faculty Researcher at Northeastern’s Ethics Institute and an Affiliate Associate Professor in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences. He has served as a research consultant for foundations, government, and news and social media companies.
Dr. Wihbey’s latest book is Governing Babel: The Debate over Social Media Platforms and Free Speech – and What Comes Next (MIT Press, Fall 2025). His research and teaching interests focus on the intersection of AI and communications; news and social media; emerging media technologies; computational journalism and visualization; media literacy; and tech policy. Author of The Social Fact: News and Knowledge in a Networked World (MIT Press, 2019), John directed Northeastern’s graduate programs in Media Innovation and Data Communication, Journalism, and Media Advocacy from 2019 to 2024. He was an editor, Research Associate, and Assistant Director at The Journalist’s Resource at the Shorenstein Center before joining the faculty at Northeastern.