I am a communication scholar working at the intersection of media history, business history, communication studies, and internet research. My research focuses on how people in power (and people who want to have power) use media for strategic sensemaking, especially around the role of business in society. I’m especially interested in examining the cultural conditions that make it possible to draw lines between legitimate and illegitimate uses of persuasive media.
I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at UC San Diego. I teach courses on communication and culture, including undergraduate courses that teach critical understandings of advertising, propaganda, and other aspects of promotional culture, and graduate seminars on critical-cultural studies of communication. My book, Business As Usual: How Sponsored Media Sold American Capitalism in the Twentieth Century, will be published by the University of Chicago Press in October 2024.
You can email me at cjack@ucsd.edu.