Sarah J. Jackson is an associate professor of communication studies at Northeastern University. She is an expert in how communication constructs identity and shapes social change in US culture. A scholar of the public sphere, she studies how media, journalism, and technology are used by and represent marginalized publics, with a focus on communication by and about Black and feminist activists. Her first book, Black Celebrity, Racial Politics, and the Press (Routledge, 2014), examines the relationship between Black celebrity activism, journalism, and American politics.

Her forthcoming coauthored book with MIT Press, Hashtag Activism: Networks of Race and Gender Justice, tells the story of how Twitter has been used by activists from #BlackLivesMatter to #MeToo. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Communication, the International Journal of Press Politics, and Feminist Media Studies, among others. Jackson is frequently called on as an expert by local and national media outlets including NPR, PBS, the Associated Press and the New York Times. She is a faculty associate of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society and a founding member of the Center for Critical Race and Digital Studies.