Directory Profile

Jennifer Hessler is an Assistant Professor in Cinema and Media Studies in the School of Cinematic Arts. She received her Ph.D. in Film and Media Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Prior to joining USC, Jennifer was an Assistant Professor in Film and Media Studies at North Carolina State University.

Jennifer’s research integrates media archaeology and digital media theory in the study of television content, programming and distribution; the way audience data is collected and used; and how audiences interface with media technologies and platforms. Her publication appears in the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, Television & New Media, The Velvet Light Trap, Participations: Journal of Audience Reception Research, and elsewhere. Her current book project (under contract with MIT Press) tracks the historical evolution of audience measurement technologies and their increasing amalgamation with the cybernetics industries.

She is also a part of the Carsey-Wolf Center Media Industries and AI Initiative, researching how the television audience analytics industry is using artificial intelligence to create and calibrate data and target audiences, including the implications thereof for media culture.

RECENT PUBLICATIONS:

“The ratings panel from participation to personification: Nielsen and the big-data reconfiguration of the audience,” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, volume 31, no. 6, 1815-1831, https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/cona/31/6.

“Big Data Audiences: Critical Approaches to the Datafication of Audience Ontologies in the Contemporary Media Industries,” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, volume 31, no. 6, 1769-1780, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/13548565251383380.

“Constructing the Sony Watchman Pocket-Television: Personalization, Spatial Agency, and the Conundrum of the Mobile Idler” Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, issue 63, no. 3 (2024), 30-55, https://muse.jhu.edu/article/927685.

“From Social Content Ratings to Sentiment Analysis: The Cultivation and Commodification of Affective Television Engagement,” Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies, issue 18, no. 2 (2021), 269-293, www.participations.org/18-02-13-hessler.pdf.

“Peoplemeter Technologies and the Biometric Turn in Audience Measurement,” Television & New Media 22, no 4 (2021), 400-419, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1527476419879415.

“Quality You Can’t Touch: Mubi Social, Platform Politics, and the Online Distribution of Art Cinema” The Velvet Light Trap, issue 82 (2018), 3-17, www.utexaspressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.7560/VLT8202.