Tiffany Petricini

Dr. Tiffany Petricini is an Associate Teaching Professor in Communication Studies at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College. Her teaching centers on the relationship between people and media, with favorite courses including Interpersonal Communication, AI and the Human Experience, and Culture and Technology. Her classroom is a space where students wrestle with big questions about what it means to be human in a digitally saturated world.

Dr. Petricini's scholarship bridges philosophy and communication. Her sole-authored book, Friendship and Technology: A Philosophical Approach to Computer Mediated Communication (Routledge, 2022), examines how digital environments reshape our deepest social bonds. She also co-edited Beyond the Podium: AI, Speech and Civic Voice (Pressbooks, 2025), an open-access textbook freely available to students and instructors worldwide.

Beyond the classroom and journal page, Dr. Petricini is a trusted public voice on technology and society. She has appeared as a social media expert on NBC affiliate WFMJ 21, been featured as a guest on CBC Radio One's Spark, and addressed scholars and practitioners at the SUNY Plattsburgh Ethics Institute.

Dr. Petricini is deeply committed to thoughtful institutional leadership around artificial intelligence. She is a Google AI in Higher Education Faculty Fellow and leads the Penn State AI Community of Practice (AICoP) and the Humanities Institute's Phenomenology Collaborative Colloquia. She serves on the executive board of the Media Ecology Association and is Book Review Editor for ETC: A Review of General Semantics. She is the author of Friendship and Technology: A Philosophical Approach to Computer Mediated Communication (Routledge, 2022) and co-editor of Beyond the Podium: AI, Speech, and Civic Voice (Penn State Pressbooks, 2025). Her research appears in journals including AI & Society, Postdigital Science and Education, and Explorations in Media Ecology. She has been featured as a social media expert on NBC affiliate WFMJ 21 News.