About Me
Hello! I’m Dr. Jess Rauchberg, an award-winning researcher and expert on digital media cultures. In August 2023, I joined Seton Hall University as a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Communication Technologies. I received my Ph.D. in Communication, New Media, and Cultural Studies from McMaster University, where I received graduate certificates in interdisciplinary artificial intelligence (AI) research and gender and social justice studies.
My research, grounded in critical/cultural studies, sits at the nexus of new media, critical disability, and platform studies. In my dissertation project, Crip data studies: Digital articulations of disability, power, and cultural production, I articulated methodological approaches for humanistic and critical/cultural interrogations of the relationship between racist and ableist ideological formations and the ways Western, Eurocentric discourses inform how platform systems read and value user-generated data and digital cultural production. I am currently working on a book project that draws from my crip data approach to investigate the enmeshed relationship between rhetorics of platform hygiene, disability, race, and creative labor. My work is currently supported by a Microsoft Research Grant. I previously received funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), the Canadian equivalent to the National Science Foundation.
I’ve received several awards from professional organizations for my writing, including 5 Top Paper Awards from the National Communication Association (NCA), the Western States Communication Association (WSCA), and the Southern States Communication Association (SSCA). In 2021, I was also nominated for NCA’s prestigious Donald P. Cushman Memorial Award, the organization’s highest distinction for student work. The International Communication Association’s (ICA) LGBTQ Studies Interest Group also recognized me as a Top Reviewer in 2020. I currently serve as the Division Secretary for NCA’s Critical and Cultural Studies Division.
I’ve been invited to guest lecture on digital media cultures, generative artificial intelligence, platform activism, and content moderation at top North American institutions such as MIT, Microsoft Research, the University of Virginia, Emerson College, Fordham University, and Simon Fraser University.
Some venues where my scholarship appears are New Media & Society, Feminist Media Studies, the Journal of Applied Communication Research, the Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, and First Monday, in addition to other venues and edited collections.
To get in touch, visit my contact page!