Faculty and Staff

Jenna Drenten

About

Dr. Jenna Drenten is associate professor of marketing in the Quinlan School of Business, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in marketing, integrated marketing communications, and digital consumer media marketing. Jenna’s research explores digital consumer culture: how digital technologies and social media platforms (e.g., TikTok, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Twitter) present new opportunities for consumers to express their identities and navigate life transitions. This includes multiple facets of digital consumer culture, monetization, gender, and identity, from individual consumer behavior to systemic macro-level structures. She is a leading scholar in the field of marketing on qualitative social media research methods.

Jenna's expertise has been featured in media outlets including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Financial Times, Buzzfeed News, Mashable, Vox, VICE, and more. For more information, go to www.jennadrenten.com.

Before pursuing her Ph.D., Jenna worked in corporate communications at BMW Manufacturing Co. in Greer, SC and worked in special events and marketing at Minyanville Media, Inc., an Emmy-Award winning online financial publishing company in New York City. Prior to joining the Quinlan faculty, Jenna was an assistant professor of marketing in the Boler School of Business at John Carroll University.

Degrees

• PhD, Marketing, University of Georgia
• BS, Integrated Marketing Communication, Winthrop University

Research Interests

• Identity Development
• Digital Consumer Culture
• Influencer Marketing
• Gender
• Social Media Marketing

Professional & Community Affiliations

Leadership

• Journal of Advertising Research Associate Editor (2022 – Present)
• Journal of Macromarketing Manuscript Review Board (2019 - Present)
• GENMAC: Gencer, Markets, and Consumers, Advisory Committee (2019 - Present)
• Center for Textual Studies and Digital Humanities (CTSDH), Steering Committee (2018 - Present)

Membership

• Association for Consumer Research (ACR)
• Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR)
• American Marketing Association (AMA)
• Consumer Culture Theory Consortium (CCTC)
• Chicago Consumer Culture Consortium (C4)

Courses Taught

• Fundamentals of Marketing (Undergraduate)
• Integrated Marketing Communications (Undergraduate and Graduate)
• Social Media Marketing and Brand Storytelling (Graduate)
• Consumer Behavior (Undergraduate and Graduate)

Awards

• Faculty Fellow, Gannon Center for Women and Leadership, Loyola University Chicago (2020)
• Outstanding Reviewer of the Year, Young Consumers (2019)
• Langerbeck Award for Undergraduate Research Mentoring, Loyola University Chicago (2019)
• Distinguished Alum, Department of Mass Communication, Winthrop University (2018)
• Outstanding Teacher of the Year - Undergraduate Programs Quinlan School of Business, Loyola University Chicago (2018)
• Visiting Research Scholar, RMIT University (2017)
• Reviewer of the Year, Marketing Education Review (2016)
• Faculty Fellow, Advertising Educational Foundation’s (AEF) Visiting Professor Program (2015)

Selected Publications

Drenten, Jenna, Robert Harrison, and Nicholas Pendarvis (2022), “More Gamer, Less Girl: Gendered Boundaries, Tokenism, and the Cultural Persistence of Masculine Dominance,” Journal of Consumer Research, https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucac046.

Brooks, Gillian, Jenna Drenten, and Mikolaj Jan Piskorski (2021), “Influencer Celebrification: How Social Media Influencers Acquire Celebrity Capital,” Journal of Advertising, 50(5), 528-547.

Drenten, Jenna and Evie Psarras (2021), “Digital Ventriloquism and Celebrity Access: Cameo and the Emergence of Paid Puppeteering on Digital Platforms,” New Media & Society, 1-20.

Drenten, Jenna and Gillian Brooks (2020), “Celebrity 2.0: Lil Miquela and the Rise of a Virtual Star System,” Feminist Media Studies, 20(8), 1319-1323.

Drenten, Jenna, Lauren Gurrieri, and Meagan Tyler (2020), “Sexualized Labour in Digital Culture: Instagram Influencers, Porn Chic and the Monetization of Attention,” Gender, Work and Organization, 1-26.

Gurrieri, Lauren and Jenna Drenten (2019), “Visual Storytelling and Vulnerable Healthcare Consumers: Normalizing Practices and Social Support through Instagram,” Journal of Services Marketing.

Gurrieri, Lauren, and Jenna Drenten (2019), “The feminist politics of choice: Lipstick as a marketplace icon” Consumption Markets & Culture, DOI: 10.1080/10253866.2019.1670649.

Gurrieri, Lauren and Jenna Drenten (2019), “The hashtaggable body: Negotiating gender performance in social media,” Handbook of Research on Gender and Marketing, Susan Dobscha (ed.), Edward Elgar Publishing, 101-116.

Drenten, Jenna, Robert Harrison, and Nicholas Pendarvis (2019), “Video Gaming as a Gendered Pursuit,” Handbook of Research on Gender and Marketing, Susan Dobscha (ed.), Edward Elgar Publishing, 28-44.

Drenten, Jenna (2018), “When Kids are the Last to Know: Embodied Tensions in Surprising Children with Family Vacations,” Young Consumers, 19(2), 199-217.

Drenten, Jenna and Linda Tuncay Zayer (2018), “The Role of Digital Virtual Consumption in Navigating Risk-laden Life Events,” Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 3(1), 46-62.

Drenten, Jenna and Linda Tuncay Zayer (2018), “Consumers' Management of Risk in Daily Life through Digital Virtual Consumption,” Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 3(1), forthcoming.

Drenten, Jenna and Lauren Gurrieri (2018), “Crossing the #Bikinibridge:  Exploring the Role of Social Media in Propagating Body Image Trends,” in Angeline G. Close (Ed.), The Dark Side of Social Media: A Consumer Psychology Perspective, New York, NY:  Routledge, 49-70. 

Drenten, Jenna (2012), “Snapshots of the Self: Exploring the Role of Online Mobile Photo Sharing in Identity Development among Adolescent Girls,” in Angeline G. Close (Ed.), Online Consumer Behavior: Theory and Research in Social Media, Advertising, and E-Tail, New York, NY: Routledge, 3-34.