KENNESAW, Ga. | Sep 4, 2026

Goldar Lenjeu Chefor has a theory about a specific kind of hurt: getting zero likes on a post.

Her research began with an observation on professional social media. The Assistant Professor of Marketing and Professional Sales noticed instances where people whose comments received negative reactions (or little reaction at all) seemed to post, share, like, and agree with others more frequently.

Her observation raised a bigger question: What does it mean to be left out when you’re online?
This became the foundation for her research on what she calls cyberostracism: the experience of being excluded in digital spaces.

And this year, that work earned her international recognition. She was named the only U.S.-based winner among six scholars selected worldwide in the 2026 AMS Review–Sheth Foundation Doctoral Competition for Conceptual Articles (DoCCA), chosen from 52 submissions by doctoral students across the globe.

“It was definitely an honor to have been recognized for my conceptual work,” Chefor said. “Seeing that some of the top marketing researchers from around the world, who made up the committee judging submissions for the award, found it promising, that to me is very encouraging and humbling.”

The work behind it, though, is still very much in progress—Chefor began the project as a doctoral student, and continues to build it here at Kennesaw State.

What does it mean to be ignored online?

Everyone knows what it feels like to be left out, but Chefor's research asks a more specific question: Does being ignored online feel the same as being ignored in person?

She suspects there may be important differences. Digital exclusion can be quieter and harder to interpret.

“The simplest example will be having your contributions on social media receive little engagement or get ignored,” she said. “A more indirect example would be noticing through social media that you have not been included or mentioned in a social experience that you would normally expect to be part of.”

Ostracism comes down to how people interpret others' behavior toward them, Chefor said. Online, however, there is another layer: algorithms influence who sees a post and how far it travels. Without knowing why their post receives little or no response, people may fill in the gap with their own interpretations.

“This situation raises important questions for platform design as well as public policy,” she said.

From observation to research

Chefor first presented the idea at the 2024 Academy of Marketing Science Doctoral Consortium, where feedback from fellow doctoral researchers encouraged her to dig deeper into the literature. She reviewed existing research on online interactions and ostracism, looking for patterns and theories that could help her develop a framework for understanding cyberostracism in consumer behavior.

“I am mostly proud that I pursued this idea without certainty of where it’d take me,” Chefor said.

She credits her doctoral training at the University of Mississippi with sparking her interest in conceptual research. She also credits Ellis Chefor, a fellow professor of Marketing and Professional Sales at KSU, with encouraging her to keep going when she questioned whether the idea was worth pursuing.

What's next?

Chefor's framework raises many possibilities for future study. Specifically, she is interested in exploring whether people experiencing exclusion might redirect their attention toward other sources of engagement, including conversational AI, or become more attentive to signals of social acceptance, such as content that already appears highly engaged with.

For brands and digital marketers, those questions could have practical implications.

"If cyberostracism changes consumers' psychological state and subsequent behavior, then the consumer journey may look different for cyberostracized consumers," she said. "Understanding how those consumers respond to social cues, branded content, recommendations, or opportunities for connection can inform how we think about content marketing strategies and digital marketing more broadly."

For Chefor, the next step is testing those ideas empirically. Until then, the DoCCA recognition offers something almost as valuable as validation: momentum.
“As a new scholar at KSU,” Chefor said, “I look forward to having this project become part of the already excellent portfolio of research that the department of marketing and professional sales is producing continually.”

Story by Casie Wilson