The Program in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies
The Center for Research in Feminist, Queer, and Transgender Studies

Sarah J. Jackson studies how media, journalism, and technology are used by and represent marginalized publics, with a focus on how communication arising from Black, feminist, and activist spaces contributes to US progress.

Sarah Jackson is a Presidential Associate Professor at the Annenberg School for Communication. Her work engages deeply with critical theories of the public sphere, race, media, and social movements. Jackson's first book, Black Celebrity, Racial Politics, and the Press (Routledge, 2014), examines the relationship between Black celebrity activism, journalism, and American politics. Her co-authored second book, Hashtag Activism: Networks of Race and Gender Justice (MIT Press, 2020), focuses on the use of Twitter in contemporary social movements. In 2020, she was awarded an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship to support research on her next book, A Second Sight, which traces the power and innovation of African American media-makers.

Jackson serves an associate editor at Communication Theory and sits on the editorial boards of six other major communication journals. She is a founder and advisory board member of the Center for Critical Race and Digital Studies. Previously, she served as the Commentary & Criticism editor of Women’s Studies in Communication, served on the advisory board of the Social Science Research Council’s MediaWell initiative, and was a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. Jackson is co-director of the Media, Inequality & Change Center which explores the intersections between media, democracy, technology, policy, and social justice. MIC produces engaged research and analysis while collaborating with community leaders to help support activist initiatives and policy interventions.