Jess Rauchberg, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Communication Technologies
College of Human Development Culture and Media

Dr. Jess Rauchberg’s work is concerned with the cultural, political, and economic impacts of new media technologies.

One of Dr. Rauchberg’s current projects investigates the idea of “crip data” as a methodological intervention that interrogates how computational systems are grounded in and reproduce ableist and racist biases in the ways they are trained to read, program, and value user-generated data. Her invocation of crip data also amplifies the subversive work of disabled creators whose labor challenges the devaluing of their user data as an ontological lack. She has also published work on issues of representation in screen and digital media, in addition to analyses of power and labor in organizations.

An expert in the realm of critical disability studies, creative labor, and platform studies, Dr. Rauchberg’s writing is featured in top peer-reviewed publications such as New Media & Society, Feminist Media Studies, the Journal of Applied Communication Research, First Monday, the Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, and Studies in Social Justice, in addition to other journals and edited collections. Her writing, scholarship, and service have received recognition from leading professional organizations in communication and media studies, including the National Communication Association, the International Communication Association, Console-ing Passions, the Western States Communication Association, and the Southern States Communication Association. She is a global member of the TikTok Cultures Research Network and serves as the Division Secretary for the National Communication Association’s Critical and Cultural Studies Division.

Dr. Rauchberg’s scholarship is currently supported by a Microsoft Research Grant.