Dissertation Project:
Crip Data Studies

My dissertation project, Crip data studies: Articulations of disability, power, and joy in a digital world, positions ableism as an ideology encoded into platform infrastructure and governing technology used alongside other networks of oppression, such as racism, colonialism, and classism. Through four different case studies—algorithmic bias on TikTok, neuroqueer strategies for digital design, digital mutual aid activism in a climate crisis, and an ethnography of Instagram’s platform and creator economies— I examine the strategies that disabled creators and social media users rely on for economic support, community building, and general platform use. My articulation of crip data amplifies alternative and activist possibilities for disability justice platform practices and digital creation, with an emphasis on organizing Internet communities.

 

The project uses textual analysis, critical qualitative, and participatory methodologies. Key questions for the dissertation project are: who gets to be human online? What are the possibilities for social media and platform labor beyond algorithmic ableism and racism?