Steve Jones is Associate Dean for Liberal Arts and Sciences, Professor of Communication, Research Associate in the Electronic Visualization Laboratory, Adjunct Professor of Electronic Media in the School of Art & Design at the University of Illinois – Chicago, and Adjunct Research Professor in the Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He holds the Ph.D. in Communication from the Institute of Communications Research, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1987), M.S. in Journalism from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1984) and a B.S. in Biology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1984). He served as Head of the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois – Chicago from 1997 to 2003, and as Head of the Faculty of Communication at the University of Tulsa from 1992 to 1997.

Jones is author and editor of numerous books, including Society Online, CyberSociety, Virtual Culture, Doing Internet Research, CyberSociety 2.0, The Encyclopedia of New Media, Rock Formation: Technology, Music and Mass Communication (all published by Sage), The Internet for Educators and Homeschoolers (ETC Publications), Pop Music & the Press (Temple University Press) and Afterlife as Afterimage: Understanding Posthumous Fame (Peter Lang Publishing). He has published numerous articles in scholarly journals including ones in IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, Cultural Studies, Journal of Virtual Environments, Works and Days, Iowa Journal of Communication, Stanford Humanities Review, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, Critical Studies in Mass Communication, The Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media and American Journalism. His research interests include the social history of communication technology, virtual environments and virtual reality, popular music studies, internet studies, and media history.

Jones was the founder and first President of the Association of Internet Researchers and serves as Senior Research Fellow at the Pew Internet & American Life Project. He has made numerous presentations to scholarly and business groups about the Internet and social change and about the Internet's social and commercial uses. He is co-editor of New Media & Society, an international journal of research on new media, technology, and culture and edits Digital Formations, a series of books on digital media, the Internet and communication (Peter Lang Publishing). His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the Tides Foundation. In addition to numerous honors and awards, the National Communication Association (the largest scholarly organization in the field of communication) and the Carl Couch Center for Social and Internet Research created the annual Steve Jones Internet Research Lecture at the National Communication Association convention in recognition of his contributions to the study of communication and technology.