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...

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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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/...

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!

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...

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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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. 😔

Ben Williamson@benpatrickwill.bsky.social · 3w ago

The anatomy of an AI-supported academic article is becoming more apparent. I desk reviewed ~70 manuscripts this week for our journal. Reckon 20ish had significant AI assistance. On top of hundreds of others recently I'm starting to see patterns. Are other editors are seeing the same or similar? 1/

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...

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

academic.oup.com

I had Covid. Then my dog died. Getting back to work with brain fog from both of those things sucks.

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.

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...

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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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...

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...

link.springer.com

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.

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

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...

go.ted.com

It took six and a half years, but I finally got Covid. And a double ear infection and strep, but who’s counting?

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!

Internet fame symposium time at the University of London!

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.

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

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.

You don’t always know I run my department’s Instagram account. But there will be signs.

So…anybody interested in a book on parasocial relationships and social media 👀👀

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🤮

Jess Maddox@jessmaddox.bsky.social · 2mo ago

More evidence that dismissing media addiction as real thing is bad, actually. Great reporting from 404 as usual. www.404media.co/microsoft-wa...

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”

More evidence that dismissing media addiction as real thing is bad, actually. Great reporting from 404 as usual. www.404media.co/microsoft-wa...

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.

404media.co

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.

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...

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

taylorfrancis.com

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.

I swear to god if any of you accuse me of using AI because I like to use an em dash in my writing

Angry Bert from Sesame Street

ALT: Angry Bert from Sesame Street

static.klipy.com

I appreciate my editor so much because she uses the same amount of exclamation marks in emails as I do.

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.

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)