Dr. Maddox’s work explores the role social media play in modern culture and labor. Specifically, she researches the relationships between content creators, influencers, and social media platforms. She is the author of The Internet is for Cats: How Animal Images Shape Our Digital Lives (Rutgers University Press). Her current book project, Anatomy of an Internet Scandal: Content Creators and the Politics of Going Viral (University of California Press) explores how content creators drive viral events through five predictable stages, all to manage their own relationships with social media platforms, algorithms, the press, audiences, and each other.

Dr. Maddox is the author of over twenty top-tier academic journal articles on social media labor, culture, and research methods. Her work can be found in New Media & Society, Social Media + Society, the International Journal of Communication, Information, Communication, & Society, Television & New Media, and Platforms & Society. In addition to her academic work, she has been quoted in over two hundred global media outlets, ranging from The New York Times, The Boston Globe, CNN, Good Morning America, and NBC Nightly News to the BBC, Australian Public Broadcasting, Denmark’s Politiken, Germany’s Science Notes, France’s La Croix, and Pakistan World Television English. She has also published original op-eds in Wired, Slate, Nieman Lab, and The Conversation.

Since 2023, Dr. Maddox has been a member of a national coalition working to advance child social media labor protections, also known as “family vlogging” or “child influencer” bills. She consulted on California’s Child Content Creator Rights Act, which was passed into law in 2024, and has provided testimony, letters of support, or educational memoranda in Utah, New York, and Missouri. She has also consulted for top tech companies, as well as numerous organizations seeking to adapt to a rapidly changing social media world.

Dr. Maddox is presently on faculty at the University of Georgia in the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, home of the Peabody Awards. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in the Department of Entertainment and Media Studies, such as: media studies, critical theory, entertainment media analysis, and content creation. She has previously taught courses in social media and society, film and media theory, storytelling fundamentals, television writing, and Ph.D-level qualitative research methods.

Dr. Maddox earned her Ph.D. in Mass Communication from the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia in 2018. She holds an M.A. in Media Arts from the University of Georgia in 2015 and B.A.s in English and Sociology from the University of Georgia in 2012. She is a founding member and current affiliate of the Content Creator Scholars Network, as well as an affiliate at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill’s Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life.

Dr. Maddox believes making media impacts one’s thinking of media. You can find her online in the following places, where she presents public-facing analysis of social media topics:

TikTok: @drjess21

Substack: BTW Social

BlueSky: @drjessmaddox.bsky.social

Instagram: @jessmaddox21

X: @drjessmaddox

Dr. Maddox is represented by Justin Brouckaert of Aevitas Creative Management in the commercial book space.