Maria Arango-Kure (they/she)
PhD Candidate
Jönköping International Business School
Welcome
I’m Maria, a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate at Jönköping International Business School (JIBS), affiliated with the Media, Management and Transformation Centre (MMTC).
I study digital media, journalism, marketing, platforms and AI systems, with a focus on responsibility, ethics, influence, visibility and power. My questions concern how people and technologies shape organizational practices, and how the consequences extend into society and the environment. I combine computational and quantitative methods with qualitative inquiry, working with large digital datasets alongside people’s accounts of their experiences and practices. These questions also grow out of nearly 20 years in digital strategy, design, development and marketing, and my involvement with non-profit organizations and communities of practice. That experience informs how I approach research and teaching, particularly when decisions about a technology affect people who have little say in its design or use. I’m interested in understanding those relationships and the responsibilities that come with them.
About
Hi there, I’m Maria
I was born in Latin America and now live in Sweden with my partner and our two dogs, Waldi and Ente. For nearly 20 years, I’ve worked in digital strategy, development and marketing through my own digital agency. I also work with non-profit organizations, communities of practice and activist collectives on making online spaces fairer, safer and more sustainable.
I returned to academia in 2019 and began my Ph.D. at JIBS in 2022, affiliated with MMTC. My academic path has taken me through audiovisual communication and new media design, media economics and management, marketing, organization studies, and information systems. I draw on these perspectives in my research and teaching, alongside the experience I bring from practice.
Publications
My peer-reviewed work
Manipulation: An integrative framework of unethical influence in marketing
Competition and media performance: A cross-national analysis of corporate goals of media companies in 12 countries
Bad news sells: The demand for news magazines and the tone of their covers
Colombian Media in the XXI Century: The Re-conquest by Foreign Investment
Research
My areas of interest
I study digital phenomena through questions of responsibility, ethics, influence, visibility and power. My interests span the six areas below, including the methods we use to investigate them.
Media economics and management
I study how media organisations and journalists navigate platform dependence, commercial pressures and changing technologies. My work examines how these conditions shape editorial decisions, content and visibility, and how people adapt to, negotiate or resist them. I’m interested in the tensions between commercial goals and journalism’s public role, and in who gains influence over the information people encounter.
Digital marketing, persuasion and manipulation
My work examines how marketing influences people and where that influence becomes manipulation. I’m interested in how data, targeting and digital interfaces shape consumer autonomy, privacy, and the responsibilities of organizations.
Platform governance, algorithms and visibility
I examine how platform rules and algorithmic systems shape whose contributions become visible, whose work is rewarded, and who can participate. This includes how platforms distribute power and responsibility among organizations, workers and users.
AI ethics and organizational responsibility
I’m interested in how people bring AI into their everyday work and how its use changes judgment, relationships and accountability. My questions concern who can influence these systems, who bears their consequences, and how organizations understand and act on their responsibilities.
Computational social science
I develop and use computational approaches to investigate digital phenomena, connecting patterns in large datasets with qualitative accounts of people’s experiences and practices. I’m also interested in how research tools, data choices and analytical assumptions shape the questions we can ask and the knowledge we produce.
Responsible digital innovation
I’m interested in how digital technologies develop within interconnected systems of organizations, people and infrastructures. I examine how responsibility is understood and shared across these relationships, including how decisions about innovation account for social inequalities, environmental consequences, and the people affected by them.
Teaching
My approach to teaching
I teach digital marketing, digital innovation, AI and digital ethics, bringing practical work with digital tools together with critical discussion of how they operate and whom they affect. I want students to develop the judgment to question these systems and take responsibility for the decisions they make with them.
Teaching portfolio
My courses, student feedback and pedagogical development, together with the thinking behind my teaching.
Teaching materials
Open-source teaching cases, datasets and other resources for business education.
Guest lectures and workshops
I welcome invitations to give guest lectures, lead workshops and collaborate on teaching.
Projects
My initiatives
More about my projectsI create and lead initiatives that bring researchers, practitioners and educators together to work on computational methods and responsible digitalization. Through seminars, workshops and shared resources, we exchange approaches and develop ideas across disciplinary and professional boundaries.
These initiatives are open to people with different backgrounds and levels of experience. You can join a session, share your work or help shape a future event. If you’d like to participate or collaborate, you’re welcome to get in touch.
Data Methods Initiative
Seminars, workshops and Ph.D. education that help social science researchers explore computational methods and make informed choices about using them.
Responsible Digital Innovation Symposium
A biennial symposium where researchers, practitioners and policymakers discuss the social and environmental responsibilities involved in digital innovation.