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Jess Maddox

@jessmaddox.bsky.social
4.9K followers 793 following 948 posts

Social media professor + expert Writing ANATOMY OF AN INTERNET SCANDAL + PARASOCIAL Repp’d by Aevitas Creative Management Thoughts mine

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Jess Maddox @jessmaddox.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Apparently when you yap on the internet for long enough, they let you co-host a podcast. Thrilled to announce I’m joining BBC’s The Interface, their podcast on all things tech. www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/...
bbc.co.uk
The Interface, BBC Studios' flagship technology podcast, returns with a new co-host and refreshed editorial focus
This season, Jessica Maddox joins returning co-host and BBC technology columnist, Thomas Germain
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Jess Maddox @jessmaddox.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
As an editor-in-chief of a new academic journal, your hallucinated, AI slop submissions risk damaging our credibility. Your AI use has an impact beyond you.
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Jess Maddox @jessmaddox.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
I'm a launching a new quarterly newsletter for everyone to keep up with my career updates and thoughts on tech, social media, and the creator economy. Subscribe (for free, always!): drjessmaddox.substack.com/p/footnotes
drjessmaddox.substack.com
Footnotes
A way to keep up and connect
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Jess Maddox @jessmaddox.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Shana Tova! And of course, free Palestine.
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Zócalo Public Square @zocalopublicsquare.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
Jimothy, the wild raccoon from Seattle, is a summer star—a sensation! Why has he moved the internet and IRL worlds? Media scholar @jessmaddox.bsky.social explains. zps.la/45ifaYz
zps.la
Jimothy Is Keeping It Real | Essay
A Seattle Raccoon Is the Antidote to a Season of Bad Lettuce, AI Slop, and Record-Breaking Heat
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Jess Maddox @jessmaddox.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
For Zocalo Public Square, I wrote about Jimothy, the viral raccoon who captured the hearts of all this summer. In a time when AI slop has come for the Internet's pets and animals, Jimothy is something LLMs could never dream of - he's real. www.zocalopublicsquare.org/jimothy-is-k...
zocalopublicsquare.org
Jimothy Is Keeping It Real | Essay
A Seattle Raccoon Is the Antidote to a Season of Bad Lettuce, AI Slop, and Record-Breaking Heat
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Jess Maddox @jessmaddox.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
New article out new in Creator & Influencer Studies: Breadwinner or breadmaker: analyzing contradictions in tradwife creators’ entrepreneurial labor, political ideology, and digital self-presentation. link.springer.com/article/10.1...
link.springer.com
Breadwinner or breadmaker: analyzing contradictions in tradwife creators’ entrepreneurial labor, political ideology, and digital self-presentation - Creator and Influencer Studies
A portmanteau of “traditional” and “wife,” the online “tradwife” trend evokes “traditional” values, religious faith, and antifeminism. Some have amassed sizable—and profitable—followings as content cr...
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Dr Carolina Are / Blogger On Pole @bloggeronpole.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
Hot off the press, the latest collab between yours truly & @pambriggs.bsky.social is now out, open access, in Creator & Influencer Studies. link.springer.com/content/pdf/...
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Dr Carolina Are / Blogger On Pole @bloggeronpole.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
We’re very grateful to our participants, who shared these thoughtful reflections, and sometimes very personal stories, with us. Massive thanks to @jessmaddox.bsky.social and the team at C&IS for such a smooth and generative peer review process!
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Jess Maddox @jessmaddox.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Our second article is out now in Creator & Influencer Studies! Carolina Are & Pamela Briggs present a framework for understanding tensions between work policies the needs of those adopting content creation as a side hustle or as means of promoting other work. link.springer.com/article/10.1...
link.springer.com
Collapsing occupational identities on social media: new approaches to digital identity management - Creator and Influencer Studies
This study observes social media users who have collapsed digital occupational identities in a professional landscape characterised both by precarity and by the need to find meaning at work. It aims t...
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Jen Raso @jenraso.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
Seeing similar and also divergent trends with other editors-in-chief of a sociolegal journal. The jumbled together references are a big one, and we've even seen a paper proposing the "author" conducted qualitative research at a scale not possible in one lifetime. Desk rejecting loads. 😔
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Jess Maddox @jessmaddox.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Has your research ever been called “too descriptive?” My co-authors & I got so fed up we wrote 10k words on why descriptive research matters, how it differs from critical research, & why it’s no accident that “critique” is being levied in mass comm at this moment. academic.oup.com/ct/advance-a...
academic.oup.com
In defense of qualitative description: reclaiming “little t” theory as a site of knowledge advancement
Abstract. This article problematizes post-positivism’s stronghold on the mass communication canon and defends the use of qualitative description as a legit
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Jess Maddox @jessmaddox.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
I had Covid. Then my dog died. Getting back to work with brain fog from both of those things sucks.
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Jess Maddox @jessmaddox.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
Probably a gas guzzling heathen 🤣
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Jess Maddox @jessmaddox.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
Oh someone did on threads, maybe they’ve all moved over there
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Jess Maddox @jessmaddox.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
That is so expensive!!!
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Jess Maddox @jessmaddox.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
That is great! I hate to say it, but when I was at Alabama they had a better parking system than Georgia. You could park in any lot on campus with your color permit (kinda like MrsRef) instead of just in the same lot all of the time
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Jess Maddox @jessmaddox.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
🤣🤣
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Jess Maddox @jessmaddox.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
You get it
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Jess Maddox @jessmaddox.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
It’s a scam!!!
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Jess Maddox @jessmaddox.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
Just paid $480 for my yearly faculty parking pass, so I once again have to say that it is such a scam to have to pay to park at your job.
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Jess Maddox @jessmaddox.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
The deadlines for two Creator & Influencer Studies special issues have been extended! Reconsidering Visibility and Value in the Creator Economy | Misogynoir, the Manosphere, and Content Creation as Black Media Battlegrounds are open through July 30. link.springer.com/journal/4453...
link.springer.com
Creator and Influencer Studies
Creator and Influencer Studies publishes studies of content creators, influencers, content production, and creator/influencer cultures examining the ...
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Jess Maddox @jessmaddox.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
The first peer-reviewed article in Creator and Influencer Studies is out now! The editorial team is thrilled to see this wonderful piece on women of color gaming creators by University of Michigan (USA) Ph.D. candidates Kristen Leer and Alexis McCarroll link.springer.com/article/10.1...
link.springer.com
Cozy gaming: investigating how gamers use TikTok for digital resistance - Creator and Influencer Studies
Cozy games are a genre marked by elements designed to evoke feelings of safety, abundance, and softness. The rising popularity of this genre is often misattributed to increased desires for escapism an...
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Jess Maddox @jessmaddox.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
Thank you 💙 I know you unfortunately know this terrible feeling
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Jess Maddox @jessmaddox.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
My sweet, perfect Samson crossed the rainbow bridge yesterday. He was diagnosed with dementia in March, and it was fast and aggressive. We made the decision to end his suffering. He taught me unconditional love, and that I was worthy of love. Hug your fur babies tight tonight.
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Candice Odgers @candiceodgers.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
Scary stories about teens sell. The data tells a different story. After decades studying adolescent mental health, here's what I found: This isn't an anxious generation. It's a resilient one. Let's start treating them that way. go.ted.com/candiceodgers
go.ted.com
What we're getting wrong about teens and tech
For years, the warning has been: smartphones are destroying a generation. But developmental psychologist Candice Odgers says that decades of data on teens tells a different story — violence, alcohol u...
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Jess Maddox @jessmaddox.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
It took six and a half years, but I finally got Covid. And a double ear infection and strep, but who’s counting?
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Jess Maddox @jessmaddox.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
We are also accepting submissions for three special issues: Reconsidering visibility and value in the creator economy; Misogynoir, the manosphere, and content creation as Black media battlegrounds; and Health Professionals as Creators and Influencers. More info here: link.springer.com/journ…
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Jess Maddox @jessmaddox.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
REMINDER!! Creator & Influencer Studies is open for article submissionsI also have 20 article process charge (APC) waivers to use before the end of the year, so submit now!
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Jess Maddox @jessmaddox.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
Internet fame symposium time at the University of London!
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Jess Maddox @jessmaddox.bsky.social · 13/06/2026
I’m off to England tonight to give a talk at the University of London called “Researching Internet Fame and (Shitty) Digital Futures.” Basically, I ask how we as researchers can avoid some of the Internet’s most toxic practices of public shaming and clout chasing while we research those very things.
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Jess Maddox @jessmaddox.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
Thank you!!
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Jess Maddox @jessmaddox.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
Ever wonder how parasocial relationships took over social media, pop culture, and fandom? I got you. My first general audience book on social media, PARASOCIAL: HOW STRANGERS STRUCTURE OUR ONLINE (AND OFFLINE) LIVES will be published by Sourcebooks in North America & Urano in Spain in Spring 2028
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Jess Maddox @jessmaddox.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
If anyone would like to feel ancient, I’m teaching a high school media camp this week. A student asked me why film is called film. They didn’t know it used to be shot on actual film.
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Jess Maddox @jessmaddox.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
You don’t always know I run my department’s Instagram account. But there will be signs.
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Jess Maddox @jessmaddox.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
So…anybody interested in a book on parasocial relationships and social media 👀👀
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Zizi Li, Ph.D. @zizilizizi.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
Slight tangent, but this reminds me of this symposium at Cal State Long Beach where Bruce Thompson from Microsoft was literally begging profs to get students AI-ready 🤮 + raving about how this Fall semester educators will be building our own agents to interact with students🤮
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Jess Maddox @jessmaddox.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
I’m extremely online for a living. My husband stays in his niche hyper fixation internet. Last week he told me about the Lego drama. Now that it’s gone viral he’s living for the fact he knew something about social media before me. I love this for him after a decade of, “have you seen -yes”
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Jess Maddox @jessmaddox.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
More evidence that dismissing media addiction as real thing is bad, actually. Great reporting from 404 as usual. www.404media.co/microsoft-wa...
404media.co
Microsoft Wants to 'Make People Addicted' to its New AI Assistant, Internal Documents Reveal
Planning documents for "Scout" say the plan is to "make people addicted" to the tool before adding new features.
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Jess Maddox @jessmaddox.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
My book advance hit my bank (yay!) but now I have to fill out all this paperwork for the university I work at for financial disclosures and outside compensation (boo). It is the most convoluted process and I am begging universities to be straightforward about something for once in their lives.
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Jess Maddox @jessmaddox.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
I'm incredibly proud of this one: I have a chapter out now in the Routledge Companion to Social Media Influencers called "Toward an Influencer Production Studies: Between-the-line labor in the Creator Economy." www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edi...
taylorfrancis.com
Toward an influencer production studies | 4 | Between-the-line labor i
This chapter presents an overview of thinking about the production and distribution of influencer content, specifically by combining foundational readings in
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Jess Maddox @jessmaddox.bsky.social · 30/05/2026
As an influencer researcher who just finished Yesteryear, there are a few things I want to commend the book on: 1. Showing how trad wife and girl boss influencers are two sides of the same coin 2. Showing that all brand identity is built on exclusion.
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Jess Maddox @jessmaddox.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
I swear to god if any of you accuse me of using AI because I like to use an em dash in my writing
static.klipy.com
Angry Bert from Sesame Street
ALT: Angry Bert from Sesame Street
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Jess Maddox @jessmaddox.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
I appreciate my editor so much because she uses the same amount of exclamation marks in emails as I do.
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Jess Maddox @jessmaddox.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
Margo does neither. It’s nuanced, real, and explores the good and bad so well. I can’t recommend it enough.
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Jess Maddox @jessmaddox.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
Margo’s Got Money Troubles is truly one of the best shows on TV right now. I research social media for a living, and I get fed up with how social media is represented in media. It almost always falls into two camps: Alarmist moral panic or frivolous, vain, cheap joke.
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Jess Maddox @jessmaddox.bsky.social · 21/05/2026
Also just to clarify, this did not come to my journal. This is something I personally received.
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Jess Maddox @jessmaddox.bsky.social · 21/05/2026
You’re very kind! Thank you!
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Jess Maddox @jessmaddox.bsky.social · 21/05/2026
2. You only recommend things you’ve been interviewed in to improve the quality of the submission. 3. You deliberately say hi to your friend in your review. Rejections happen, and that’s cool. It’s part of the game. But can we please bring the “peer” back to peer review?
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Jess Maddox @jessmaddox.bsky.social · 21/05/2026
For the reviewer 2s of the world: if you want to be jerks, you do you. But ways people in a smalle, niche field can figure out it’s you: 1. You only recommend your own work as things to improve the quality of the submission. (Continued)
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