Education

2017 Hanover College, B.A.
2019 Purdue University, M.S.
2025 Purdue University, Ph.D.

Courses Taught

Introduction to Public Relations
Communication Research Methods

Career Specialties

Jackson's research examines issues that involve media psychology, political communication, strategic communication, and cognition. Her work has focused primarily on studying partisan news media effects, political (mis)information and sharing, and strategic communication around politicized issues.

Professional and Community Activities

Jackson's recent research activity has examined the processes at play in consuming and communicating political (mis)information. Her most recent publication was in Communication Research Reports and reported on how partisan news consumers engage with political misinformation and decide whether or not to share these news stories containing misinformation. This paper was part of a larger project examining the role that metacognition and partisan cues play in recognizing and sharing political misinformation online and in-person. 

Jackson's dissertation project involved an experiment that compared the misinformation detection, political behavior intentions, and communication intentions of groups of partisans who saw a political news article containing misinformation and groups of partisans who saw a political news article that did not contain misinformation. This experiment compared people who did see misinformation to people who did not see misinformation to determine the extent to which the presence of misinformation impacted people's detections of misinformation and found that the presence of counterattitudinal political cues played more of a role in detecting misinformation than the presence of misinformation itself. 

Other ongoing projects she is working on include:

analyzing believability and detectability of AI-generated political images
examining the role that (in)coherence and metacognitive effort play in processing and communicating partisan news media
examining the effects that practicing mindfulness has on partisan news media consumption
updating theorizing about parasocial relationships on social media
typologizing the resilience practices of collegiate athlete activists during a resurgence of athlete activism in 2020. 

Honors and Awards

Brian Lamb School of Communication Monroe Scholar Award for Research Activity as a Ph.D. Student in 2025. 

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