Jenna Jacobson

• PhD, Information
• Toronto Metropolitan University

Background Online anti-social behaviour is on the rise, reducing the perceived benefits of social media in society and causing a number of negative outcomes. This research focuses on the factors associated with young adults being perpetrators of anti-social behaviour when using social media. Method Based on an online survey of university students...

Journalists increasingly use social media data to infer and report public opinion by quoting social media posts, identifying trending topics, and reporting general sentiment. In contrast to traditional approaches of inferring public opinion, citizens are often unaware of how their publicly available social media data is being used and how public op...

Journalists increasingly use social media data to infer and report public opinion by quoting social media posts, identifying trending topics, and reporting general sentiment. In contrast to traditional approaches of inferring public opinion, citizens are often unaware of how their publicly available social media data is being used and how public op...

The ready access to and availability of social media has opened up a wealth of data that marketers are leveraging for strategic insight and digital marketing. Yet there is a lack of professional norms regarding the use of social media in marketing and a gap in understanding consumers’ comfort with marketers’ use of their social media data. This stu...

The ready access to and availability of social media has opened up a wealth of data that marketers are leveraging for strategic insight and digital marketing. Yet there is a lack of professional norms regarding the use of social media in marketing and a gap in understanding consumers’ comfort with marketers’ use of their social media data. This stu...

Human behaviour is complex and demographics are insufficient to understand information behaviour. More nuanced analyses are required to understand the factors that drive action. Focusing on digital archiving and online protection strategies as manifestations of information behaviour, factors that influence perceptions of online risk were investigat...

Given the rise of online influencers, this research aims to analyze non-human social media influencers. Using a qualitative in-depth content analysis of Instagram images and captions, we analyze the social presence strategies—affective, interactive, and cohesive strategies—and the social media influencer advertising practices of top animal influenc...

Purpose Social media management is an emerging profession that is growing as companies increasingly adopt social media. The purpose of this paper is to analyze social media managers’ personal branding. Design/methodology/approach In-depth qualitative data is drawn from 20 semi-structured interviews with social media managers and supported by three...

The use of the internet and social media have changed consumer behavior and the ways in which companies conduct their business. Social and digital marketing offers significant opportunities to organizations through lower costs, improved brand awareness and increased sales. However, significant challenges exist from negative electronic word-of-mouth...

With the introduction of new information communication technologies, employers are increasingly engaging in social media screening, also known as cybervetting, as part of their hiring process. Our research, using an online survey with 482 participants, investigates young people’s concerns with their publicly available social media data being used i...

The article examines whether and how the ever-evolving practice of using social media to screen job applicants may undermine people’s trust in the organizations that are engaging in this practice. Using a survey of 429 participants, we assess whether their comfort level with cybervetting can be explained by the factors outlined by Petronio’s commun...

The ready access to and availability of social media has opened up a wealth of data that marketers are leveraging for strategic insight and digital marketing. Yet there is a lack of professional norms regarding the use of social media in marketing and a gap in understanding consumers’ comfort with marketers’ use of their social media data. This stu...

Journalists increasingly use social media data to infer and report public opinion by quoting social media posts, identifying trending topics, and reporting general sentiment. In contrast to traditional approaches of inferring public opinion, citizens are often unaware of how their publicly available social media data are being used and how public o...

The paper investigates the factors that influence perceptions of online risk and the consequential behavioural responses to those perceptions. Using Bates’ theory of information behaviour, we focus on online protection strategies and digital archiving as a specific instantiation and manifestation of information behaviour and analyze how factors, su...

This paper provides an introduction to the Proceedings of the 2019 International Conference on Social Media and Society (#SMSociety). The conference is an annual gathering of leading social media researchers, policy makers, and practitioners from around the world. Now in its 10th year, the 2019 conference is hosted by the Social Media Lab at the Te...

We are witnessing a changing social media environment with new actors, new influencers, and new challenges. Considering the changes on social media platforms, the rise of bots, and the increased participation of state actors, this thematic collection addresses the methodological, topical, and ethical issues of networked influence. The Facebook-Camb...

The amount and complexity of data that can be accessed from social media has been increasing exponentially. We examine the value of using information visualizations as a tool to study people’s attitudes and perceptions regarding their social media data being used by third parties. In the context of using social media to screen job applicants, we in...

This paper provides an introduction to the 2018 Proceedings of the International Conference on Social Media and Society (#SMSociety). The conference is an annual gathering of leading social media researchers, policy makers, and practitioners from around the world. Now in its 9th year, the 2018 conference is hosted by the Centre for Business Data An...

In the heyday of social media, individuals around the world held high hopes for the democratizing force of social media; however, in light of the recent public outcry of privacy violations, fake news, and Russian troll farms, much of optimism toward social media has waned in favor of skepticism, fear, and outrage. This special issue critically expl...

Young people are repeatedly promised that internships will pave the way to the career of their dreams by providing the ‘hands-on experience’ necessary to differentiate themselves in a fierce job market. However, in many industries, internships – and increasingly unpaid internships – have become the obligatory norm. Young people quickly learn that t...

Today, billions of people around the world are turning to social media to socialize, conduct business, keep up with the news, as well as discover, discuss, and share information. The significance of this global adoption of a relatively new communication and information technology cannot be overlooked. As a country, Canada has one of the most conn...

This is an introduction to the Proceedings of the 2017 International Conference on Social Media and Society, an annual gathering of leading social media researchers from around the world. The conference is organized by the Social Media Lab (http://socialmedialab.ca) at Ryerson University. Now, in its 8th year, the 2017 conference in Toronto, Canada...

As a scholarly domain, social media research has come a long way since the term “social media” first appeared in the literature in the early 2000s. Since then, researchers across disciplines have been actively examining the impact of social media on society. According to Web of Science, there are currently over 19,000 academic articles that include...

This research tells a story of age, aging, and evolving with mobile technologies in a single Canadian community. Using data from 2005 and 2012, we critically analyze seniors’ use of mobile technologies by applying Taylor’s information use environment. The article seeks to understand the influence of context in studying user behaviour vis-à-vis a) d...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyse the 2012 Olympic opening ceremony with the goal of making a nuanced contribution to the discussion of online participation and engagement afforded by social media. Design/methodology/approach This paper applies a qualitative approach of sequential video analysis to the 2012 Olympic opening ceremony...

This paper is the Introduction to the 2016 Proceedings of the International Conference on Social Media and Society, an annual gathering of leading social media researchers from around the world. Now, in its 7th year, the 2016 conference is hosted at Goldsmiths, University of London, UK from July 11 to 13. The conference's intensive three-day progra...

Movember is an annual “month-long celebration of the moustache” where men grow a mustache and raise money in the largest philanthropic endeavor for men’s health. Movember is predominantly an online campaign, and consequently, participants have actively embraced social media; this is evidenced in the 1,879,994 tweets collected during Movember 2012 i...

The Social Media & Society Conference is an annual gathering of leading social media researchers from around the world. Organized by the Social Media Lab at Ryerson University, the conference focuses on the best practices for studying the impact and implications of social media on society.

This paper examines the experiences of young Canadian women working in Toronto and New York who have undertaken unpaid internships in the creative sector. Interviews focused on their internship experiences, ability to secure paid employment, knowledge of the legal status of unpaid internships, and familiarity with emergent activism against unpaid i...

Various information models have been developed to explain information practice; however, this poster suggests the changes brought about by social bookmarking in a Web 2.0 environment require a new type of information practice, which I call information curation. Information curation describes an alternative type of information practice to account fo...

This thesis is a theoretically based feminist critical analysis of the politics, problems, and differences around the philanthropy related to breast cancer in comparison to prostate cancer with a focus on the Canadian reality. It is an analysis of the leading national volunteer-based organization dedicated to breast cancer philanthropy: The Canadia...