Welcome President Jones!

The Board of Regents named Robert J. Jones the 34th President of the UW. Jones visited campus a few days later and talked about his excitement to join the University.

鈥淚 am honored to be joining the 91探花 and excited to lead this extraordinary public university in its mission serving students, families and communities across Washington and beyond,鈥� Dr. Robert J. Jones said.

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— 91探花News (@uwnews)

Snow days on campus

Students took advantage of a delayed start at the 91探花in Seattle.

Snow day in Seattle! 鉂勶笍 Stay safe everyone. @uofwa.bsky.social campus is on a delayed start until 10 a.m. today.

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91探花researchers shared their love stories

For Valentine鈥檚 Day, 91探花News asked 12 91探花researchers to share what made them fall in love with their work.

For Valentine鈥檚 Day, 91探花News asked 12 @uofwa.bsky.social researchers to share their love stories: What made them decide to pursue their career paths? 馃У 1/3Their stories: bit.ly/4kcgPFt

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Cherry blossoms

Everyone’s favorite: cherry blossom season! Thousands of people flocked to campus to see the blooming trees.

Bloom check 馃尭It's a beautiful spring day in Seattle, the sun is out and the blossoms are emerging on the cherry trees in the Quad. @uofwa.bsky.social bit.ly/4l7z5QO

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National Library Week

In honor of National Library Week, 91探花News spoke with Julie Tanaka, associate dean for Distinctive Collections, about the library’s unique 1544 edition of Dante Alighieri’s “Divine Comedy.”

馃摎 In honor of National Library Week we spoke with Julie Tanaka, associate dean for Distinctive Collections at @uofwa.bsky.social Libraries, about the library's unique 1544 edition of Dante Alighieri's "Divine Comedy."More: https://bit.ly/42h0Xu1x

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Season 2 of “Ways of Knowing”

The 91探花News office and the College of Arts & Sciences released the second season of their podcast “Ways of Knowing.”

The podcast "Ways of Knowing鈥� highlights how the humanities can reflect everyday life. In S2 Ep1, Anna Preus @uwartsci.bsky.social discusses how she digitally streamlines the documentation of historical text.More: www.washington.edu/news/2025/05…

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2025 Commencement

In June, more than 7,000 members of the 91探花Class of 2025 participated in commencement ceremonies at Husky Stadium.

More than 7,400 @uofwa.bsky.social graduates of the Class of 2025 participated in Saturday's commencement ceremony at Husky Stadium. Media assets: drive.google.com/file/d/1qXI3…

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More than 7,400 @uofwa.bsky.social graduates of the Class of 2025 鈥� the most ever to pre-register 鈥� plan to participate in the June 14 ceremony.More: www.washington.edu/news/2025/06…

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Vera C. Rubin Observatory unveils a new glimpse into the solar system

A new era of astronomy and astrophysics began when the first images captured by the NSF鈥揇OE Vera C. Rubin Observatory were released, demonstrating the extraordinary capabilities of the telescope and the world鈥檚 largest digital camera.

A new era of astronomy and astrophysics began Monday when the first images captured by the were released, demonstrating the extraordinary capabilities of the new telescope and the world鈥檚 largest digital camera.
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— 91探花News (@uwnews)

President Jones officially starts

President Jones was welcomed as the UW’s 34th president ahead of fall quarter.

Let's give a warm Husky welcome to the UW's 34th President, Robert J. Jones!President Jones will hold a faculty appointment in the Department of Biology in @uwartsci.bsky.social, and is a distinguished scholar whose research focuses on crop physiology.www.washington.edu/president/bi…

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Story pole installed on campus

A story pole, created by three Coast Salish carvers, was installed on campus outside of Denny Hall.

Sven Haakanson, a 91探花professor of anthropology, worked with three Coast Salish carvers to install a story pole on campus. Story poles are created to share and teach Coast Salish legends, histories and stories. A celebration will be held by the carvers on Thursday.www.washington.edu/news/2025/09…

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Welcome back, Huskies!

Welcome, Huskies! Thousands of incoming @uofwa.bsky.social students gathered for an annual 'W' formation today after kicking off the school year with a convocation ceremony. #newhuskies2025 #uwdawgdazeMedia assets: drive.google.com/drive/folder…

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Welcome back to class today, Huskies!

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91探花alum wins Nobel Prize

Mary Brunkow graduated from the 91探花with a bachelor鈥檚 degree in molecular & cellular biology and currently works at the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle.

91探花alum Mary Brunkow, 鈥�83, won the Nobel Prize in Medicine this morning.This photo was taken while she was on the phone with the Nobel Committee in Sweden. Mary said she initially missed the call because a strange number popped up on her phone 鈥� she thought it might be spam.1/3

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Tuition funded

Just before the holidays, an estimated $50 million gift from an anonymous donor was given to cover tuition for the senior-year clinical rotations of all undergraduate students enrolled in the Medical Laboratory Science Program.

A heartfelt thank you to an anonymous donor for funding tuition for senior-year clinical rotations for @uofwa.bsky.social Medical Laboratory Science seniors 鈥� now and for decades to come. The educational program, which awards a Bachelor of Science degree, is offered by the @uwsom-wwami.bsky.social.

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But social media is redefining how people grieve, and Twitter in particular 鈥� with its ephemeral mix of rapid-fire broadcast and personal expression 鈥� is widening the conversation around death and mourning, two 91探花 sociologists say.

In a paper presented Aug. 20 at the annual of the American Sociological Association in Seattle, 91探花doctoral students and analyzed the feeds of deceased Twitter users and found that people use the site to acknowledge death in a blend of public and private behavior that differs from how it is addressed on other social media sites.

While posts about death on Facebook, for example, tend to be more personal and involve people who knew the deceased, Cesare and Branstad say, Twitter users may not know the dead person, tend to tweet both personal and general comments about the deceased, and sometimes tie the death to broader social issues 鈥� for example, mental illness or suicide.

“It’s bringing strangers together in this space to share common concerns and open up conversations about death in a way that is really unique, ” Cesare said.

The researchers used , a website that links social media pages of dead people to their online obituaries, to find deceased Twitter users. They sorted through almost 21,000 obituaries and identified 37 dead people with Twitter accounts (the vast majority of entries are linked to Facebook or MySpace profiles). The most common known causes of death among people in the sample were, in order, suicides, automobile accidents and shootings.

Cesare and Branstad pored over the 37 feeds to see how users tweeted about the deceased, and concluded that Twitter was used “to discuss, debate and even canonize or condemn” them.

Among their findings:

• Some users maintained bonds with the dead person by sharing memories and life updates (“I miss cheering you on the field”)
• Some posted intimate messages (“I love and miss you so much”) while others commented on the nature of the death (“So sad reading the tweets of the girl who was killed”)
• Others expressed thoughts on life and mortality (“Goes to show you can be here one moment and gone the next”)
• Some users made judgmental comments about the deceased (“Being a responsible gun owner requires some common sense 鈥� something that this dude didn’t have!”)

The expansive nature of the comments, the researchers say, reflects how death is addressed more broadly on Twitter than on Facebook, the world’s largest social networking site. Facebook users frequently know each other offline, often post personal photos and can choose who sees their profiles. By contrast, Twitter users can tweet at anybody, profiles are short and most accounts are public. Given the 140-character tweet limit, users are more likely to post pithy thoughts than soul-baring sentiments.

Those characteristics, the researchers say, create a less personal atmosphere that emboldens users to engage when someone has died, even if they didn’t know the person.

“A Facebook memorial post about someone who died is more like sitting in that person’s house and talking with their family, sharing your grief in that inner circle,” Branstad said.

“What we think is happening on Twitter is people who wouldn鈥檛 be in that house, who wouldn’t be in that inner circle, getting to comment and talk about that person. That space didn’t really exist before, at least not publicly.”

Traditions around death and dying have existed for centuries, the researchers note. But increased secularization and medical advances in the 20^th century made death an uncomfortable topic for public conversation, they write, relegating grief to an intimate circle of family and close friends.

Social media has changed that, they say, bringing death back into the public realm and broadening notions about who may engage when someone dies.

“Ten, twenty years ago, death was much more private and bound within a community,鈥� Branstad said. “Now, with social media, we’re seeing some of those hierarchies break down in terms of who feels comfortable commenting about the deceased.”

Twitter use is still evolving, the researchers point out, making the site fertile ground for studying how social media is used for mourning in the future.

“New norms will have to be established for what is and isn’t appropriate to share within this space,” Cesare said. “But I think the ability of Twitter to open the mourning community outside of the intimate sphere is a big contribution, and creating this space where people can come together and talk about death is something new.”

For more information, contact Cesare at ninac2@uw.edu or Branstad at jlbran@uw.edu.

But also by pepper-spraying campus cops, epic fails and Gangnam-style? In the fullness of time, will history remember us for 鈥� Grumpy Cat?

“,” a new book by and of the 91探花 , explores the nature of virality and suggests that the ubiquitous Internet memes of today, from silly to serious, may indeed make a fair history for tomorrow.

“This is going to tell the story of our societies,” said Nahon, an associate professor. “Viral information will probably stick for longer than regular information.” She cautioned, however, that many things that go viral convey erroneous or biased information that can unfairly affect public opinion.

Nahon and Hemsley, a doctoral student, combined qualitative and quantitative methods to study thousands of blogs, posts and the videos they link to, and more than a million tweets, blending theory from network science, social computation and communication to explore the origins and impact of virality.

“We go beyond the marketing hype of ‘how to make something viral’ and talk about social aspects of it,” said Hemsley. “Why it is important as a cultural artifact and how the current landscape of social media constitutes a ‘social infrastructure’ that facilitates sharing 鈥� like virality 鈥� and social awareness like never before.”

Virality, the authors stress, relies on social interactions and is not new, and not always global. They cite the 1955 arrest of Rosa Parks as an example of virality in how quickly the African-American community of Montgomery, Ala., used phones, hand bills and word of mouth to recruit 40,000 to its boycott of the bus system, before press coverage of the story.

“It’s not enough that a billion people watch CNN at night to see information 鈥� that鈥檚 not viral, it鈥檚 popular,” Nahon said. “鈥榁iral鈥� means that each of us has shared that information, and that鈥檚 the reason it鈥檚 important 鈥� it鈥檚 a social process.

“And when something really becomes viral, we鈥檙e talking about distribution to millions and sometimes hundreds of millions at the same time.”

Is there any certain recipe for virality? Not really, said Nahon. 鈥淲e looked at so many examples and found that you have to have certain ingredients. It鈥檚 unpredictable, but that鈥檚 the beautiful thing about the nature of human beings.鈥�

Nahon said the idea for the book came when colleagues at the Library of Congress sought her advice on how they might accurately depict our quickly changing digital culture.

“I said they should start with the viral information, because that would portray society at a particular moment. But I also say let’s do it cautiously; we have to understand that some of those voices carry misinformation.”

“Going Viral” was published in November by . The research was funded by a Google research grant.

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聽For more information, contact Nahon at 206 685-6668, karineb@uw.edu or on Twitter at @karineb; or Hemsley at jhemsley@uw.edu or on Twitter at @JeffHemsley.