Algorithmic Ableism + Critical Data Studies

My work on algorithmic ableism demonstrates how offline networks of oppression influence the development, governance, and use of digital media. These projects, extending from critical media studies to information studies, investigate algorithmic bias on social media platforms, platform governance, and content moderation practices.

 

I extend Safiya Noble’s groundbreaking work on racist search engine algorithms to demarcate the relationships between ableism and racism in algorithmic cultures and platform governance. By analyzing the historical networks of racism, ableism, and colonialism, I trouble algorithmic ableism as a new, digital iteration of Euro-centric ideas of the Human sustained by the sovereignty of social platforms. I position crip and disability justice approaches to data as possibilities beyond algorithmic ableism.

 

My scholarship in this area includes invited book chapters and presentations at the National Communication Association, International Communication Association, and the TikTok Cultures Research Network symposium.

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Publications include:

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Rauchberg, J.S. (2022). #Shadowbanned: Queer, trans, and disabled creator responses to algorithmic oppression on TikTok. In P. Pain (ed.), LGBTQ Digital Cultures: A Global Perspective (pp. 196-209), Routledge. 

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Rauchberg, J. (2022). Bestie vibes only? Disabled content creators, shadowbanning, and the politics of authenticity. Lewis and Ruth Sherman Centre for Digital Scholarship.

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Rauchberg, J.S. (2021). Review of Distributed Blackness: African American Cybercultures by André Brock, Jr. Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience, 7(2), 1-4. 

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Rauchberg, J.S. (2020). TikTok's digital eugenics: Challenging ableism and algorithmic erasure through disability activism. Flow Journal, 27(4).

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