Jessica Maddox (BA ’12, MA ’15, PhD ’18), associate professor in the Grady College Department of Entertainment and Media Studies, has been named the inaugural editor-in-chief of the new, fully open access journal, Creator and Influencer Studies, published by Springer Nature. Maddox will lead the first academic journal devoted to research on influencers, creator culture and content production.  

“This is one of the greatest honors of my career,” Maddox said. “It has been so rewarding to see how much this journal means to so many people already, and I’m thrilled and humbled to help provide this space for our research community.” 

Given the growing influence of creator cultures, as demonstrated by the proposed Creator Bill of Rights in the US House of Representatives and the European Union’s creation of an Influencer Legal Hub, Creator and Influencer Studies will offer scholars an interdisciplinary venue for their research on influencers and cutting-edge technologies.  

Maddox said having a journal focused on this field of study is long overdue. “Around the world, there is so much research happening into content creators, influencers, and live streamers. How we consume entertainment and information has radically changed, and having a journal devoted to making sense of this is so important.”

Maddox is a leading authority on creator culture and digital platforms, and a prominent voice in formalizing creator studies. She is also a public intellectual frequently featured in The New York Times, Vice, Wired, Vox, and on CNN. 

As the editor-in-chief of Creator and Influencer Studies, Maddox will lead the journal continuing her work as a founding member of the Content Creator Scholars Network. Her research on internet culture — from Alabama “RushTok,” looking at sorority rush at the University of Alabama, to YouTube’s Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) community — is foundational in academic studies of digital culture. Her first book, “The Internet is for Cats: How Animal Images Shape our Digital Lives” (Rutgers University Press, 2023), will be followed by “Anatomy of An Internet Scandal: Content Creators and the Politics of Going Viral,” (University of California Press, forthcoming).  

As editor-in-chief of Creator and Influencer Studies, Maddox will lead an editorial team of associate editors including leading scholars Jess Rauchberg, Adri da Rosa Amaral, Qian Huang and Daniela Jaramillo-Dent. Supported by an editorial board of emerging leaders and established experts in studies of online culture representing more than 14 different countries, the journal will publish interdisciplinary research and will serve as an innovative venue for research on content creators and the creator economy.  

Creator and Influencer Studies is now open for submissions at https://link.springer.com/journal/44538.