✨Programming Drop!✨Curious about the creator economy? Join us on Nov 15th for a LIVE
#CCSNChats
event; Industry insight meets academic expertise in a virtual roundtable featuring
@brookeerinduffy
,
@Producing2Power
@JessRauchberg
& Michelle Beaver (YouTube); register below👇🔗
The thing about job market discourse On Here is that it's largely (public) ivy/elite PhDs giving well-intentioned advice that simply does not translate to the rest of us. There are "invisible" networks of patronage that (typically) render the rest of the applicants as undesirable
the dismissal of cultural studies work as "too much theory and not enough data analysis" or "this sounds like a book project" is a complete disavowal of WHAT cultural studies offers as a mode of thinking and knowledge making: to sit with the complexities, to start somewhere.
finalized the syllabus for my grad seminar on diversity culture! sample modules focus on: corporate social justice, diversity in higher ed, tech + labor, and cultural production in media industries.
give it a read + share!
Perhaps a silly thing to celebrate, but I’ve passed 100 citations.
I remember very early on in my grad career I was told, “we don’t do disability studies in this discipline.” So, immense gratitude to all the folks thinking with my work. 💖🥹
My one unwarranted take about qual v quant is that this is a great time for all social scientists to reflect on how yall treat humanistic researchers in your fields.
I know it's syllabus time for many university workers, so I thought I would share an abbreviated version of my undergrad Gender and the Media course outline!
We're taking on streamers, tradwives, disability activism, pop stars, Zines and memes.
This week:
My grad class is analyzing Alix Earle’s apology video for our cancel culture lecture.
Undergrad classs will watch Charli xcx’s music video for guess to talk about Laura Mulvey’s work on the male gaze.
Me? I’m living my best professor life.
Hate to say it, but the 2024 election cycle confirms that shitposting, memes, and vibes are going to be essential campaign tools for both parties as we move toward November.
Arguably, this has been happening since 2008, and was a core staple of the 2022 PA senate race.
Autoethnography (when done well) is an excellent tool to engage in social introspection and critical sense making about culture. It should be an entry point to a larger analytical conversation with rich layerings of theory and reflexivity.
ANNOUNCING: (Re)Valuing the Creator Economy Preconference | 20 Nov 2024 in NOLA
This is the first
@NatComm
precon focused on Creator Studies, and we're looking for panelists!
Organized by me,
@drjessmaddox
@MeganZahay
and
@performingwoman
Info below! ⤵️
1/x
This week, I officially graduated from
@McMasterU
with my doctorate in Communication, New Media, & Cultural Studies. I’m the second person to receive this degree (ever!) so it felt extra special to celebrate with bio/chosen family and my brilliant supervisor. ♥️
My latest publication with
@paulamgardner
is out in
@HMCjournal
! We hope this essay sparks a move toward more critical/cultural work in the human-machine communication world!
Better yet, this article is open access! Give it a read here:
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: we are all navigating different job markets. The academic industry is not a homogenous one, so let’s stop pretending we’re all in the same playing field.
It's just a totally different game. The ways non-Ivy/elite PhDs need to navigate how they style job materials or even mundane conversations on a campus visit? It's TOTALLY different. Yes, we're all going through a similar event, but we don't have an identical experience at ALL.
May be a hot take, but influencing as we know it wouldn’t exist without reality tv.
To me, it’s truly a fascinating media industry that transformed audience participation, the art of obfuscating curation as authenticity, the manufacturing of (micro)celebrity.
Critical humanistic Internet studies and platform work, though perhaps not 'lauded' or 'popular,' pushes scholarship on sociotechnical systems in groundbreaking ways, even if it's not always recognized as such. It's for this reason I'll continue to do this work.
imagining an Internet studies conference where disability work is front and center.
not work "about" disabled people. I'm dreaming of a space where disabled people as thinkers are at the center. I'm dreaming of our musings on the Internet and platform systems at the center.
However, this advice is not given to my peers (humanistic media studies scholars) at elite programs. I'm offering this narrative to share that there are different strategies offered to make one's way through the market depending on where our degree[s] come from.
fine-tuning my gender and the media course for Fall... it's safe to say this might be my *favorite* week of readings. bring on the tradwives and girlbosses!
give me some wild questions you've been asked in academic interviews. I don't mean weird convos at the dinner, I mean literally on the zoom call or in meeting with the dean, etc.
I drew a lot of how I navigated the market from where I received my first grad degree (a so-called "degree mill"). Was told publish or perish the second I entered the MA program, say yes to all service even when it doesn't necessarily fit with what you're doing. Teach everything!
howdy new followers! I'm Jess, and I'm an assistant professor writing about platform economies, disability, and cultural production. I'm a former disability content creator slowly writing a book about shitposting.
Expect lots of musings on academic and creative labor 🥰
The platformization of academic labour is here! And has been for a minute. So much of what we see in the creator economy is creeping into the higher education industry… the tenure track position, like macro influencer status, is now something grad students aspire towards.
There is a perverse, self-reinforcing logic to the demise of the history job market: with no jobs, elite academics can no longer really build schools/legacies through grad training/employment, so they abandon the academy & channel their energy into becoming media celebrities.
why am i being asked to drop over 500 USD to register for a conference that hasn't officially accepted/rejected my submissions yet??? make it make sense!
busy syllabus drafting for my very first graduate course today. here's the working description for diversity cultures!
still building the reading list--any recommendations on readings, films, and podcasts are welcome.
scholarship on marginality and identity does NOT automatically equate to "cultural studies" and I wish more academics in the social sciences (even media studies!) understood this.
dream interview: featured on the latest
@wowiftruepod
episode about the water bottle industrial complex! thank you for letting me yap about a platform's role in shaping gendered consumer culture.
Internet culture work that fetishizes creators not only limits the legitimacy of critique. It also creates a dangerous power dynamic where we don’t see creators as people, resulting in predatory analysis that has material impact on those we’re writing with/about/for.
Scholarly organizations are all about “groundbreaking” and “critical” work until it names how that organization plays a major role in the facilitation of precarity and marginality of academic workers.
The influencer industry is a market that is entrenched in racism. White women influencers with generational wealth—like Alix—ultimately benefit from how they uphold white supremacy.
It’s also a response to the ways influencer snarkers have shared these racist tweets
a lot of academics will have a keen-eyed structural analysis of breakfast cereals or barbie dolls but not when you ask them to think about their own profession and the context in which it operates
adventures in anonymous peer review: "The claim that the essay “introduces algorithmic ableism” as a theory is overstated. That term has been used online countless times by disability scholars and advocates."
I'm one of disability scholars you're talking about!
I've been saying for YEARS now that creative work will be part and parcel to succeed in legacy media industries. (e.g., to gain/maintain stardom in 21C entertainment media, one must also be an influencer.)
Fascinating to see this iteration & the implications for U.S. politics
Platforms already actively task their content moderation to suppress LGBTQ+ creators, Black creators, and disabled creators. Hiding marginalized creators doesn't protect kids. It just repurposes eugenicist beliefs about public/private visibility on digital platforms.
#StopKOSA
#KOSA
's duty of care is so broad it could be weaponized by the government to bully platforms into suppressing ANY content that could make kids "depressed" or "anxious."
It can & would be used to censor information about the genocide in Gaza, for example.
after months in the making,
@WEARECCSN
has launched! really excited and grateful to be one of this network's founding members.
this group is sure to be a community hub for critical qualitative and humanistic creator studies scholarship 🫶🪩
🎉 Introducing the Content Creator Scholars Network! 🎉 (CCSN)! Your latest hub for the research, education & public scholarship on/about/with platform content creators! Let us tell you about how we came to be and what resources are available to you!
not to get on my soapbox but it does bother me when humanistic, theoretical work is fashioned as "stuff you can do when you're waiting for ethics approval." honestly this takes just as long (depending on the project) even if you're not dealing with the same data.
A few thoughts on “Just do a postdoc!”
1. This perpetuates pre 08 recession discourse on higher ed as a calling, not an industry. Such rhetorics obfuscate a job as something you choose, not a crapshoot embedded with networks of patronage.
Feeling very grateful to have had both masters AND doctoral advisors who invested a LOT of time in my writing. Trying to return it to my grad advisees now.
Most importantly, it’s a method that (again, when done well) addresses questions and gaps that positivist and socio-psychological methods cannot even begin to answer.
had a blast speaking with
@asilbwrites
for
@TechCrunch
!
“I think people are excited about Charli XCX and excited about ‘Brat’ summer because it offers different ways to explore their identity and... the uncertainty that the 2024 election really brings,” Rauchberg said.
I used to feel like a bad writer bc of my learning disabilities. My words didn't come out pretty and poetic. they were splintered, disparate. Now I realize this is just a different way to script words into sentences. There are many ways to be a strong writer.
Administrative work is an increasingly central component of TT positions, especially outside of the R1 world. And I wish we were more honest about that.
This platform has a history of censoring and suppression marginalized creators, especially disabled users.
I can only imagine how further automation will reinforce
#AlgorithmicAbleism
.
since we're still talking about The Job Market on here, here are all of my hot takes, collectively encapsulated into our study of TT jobs in the U.S. and the labour of diversity
I wrote about this exact phenomenon in my essay about the drivers license challenge! Platform affordances play a huge role in shaping viral, memetic humor.
This 'cutesy' 'demure' shit suddenly being everywhere demonstrates how the dominant form of humour is now purely mimetic, any vestige of originality or funniness stripped away - replaced by regurgitating tiktok trends to signify you're part of the in-crowd
Disability and Media Studies peeps:
ISO your favorite media examples of disability and representation. Preferably something I could screen in class. Thank you!!!
Tonight my grad class read Hall’s “the whites of our eyes” and talked about overt racism in entertainment media, came home and now I’m watching it unfold on tv
What’s upsetting is that this dismissal comes from quant AND qual social scientists… instead of trying to understand why humanistic methods and approaches are valuable, we are torn apart
Things qualitative scholars have said about my writing:
“Glorified blogging”
“I’m unsure how you even submitted a paper to [top journal in my field]”
“This is grad student writing” (problematic on so many levels…)
The shaming & targeting of Black women is a well-rehearsed tactic driving a reactionary, anti-democratic agenda. Sharing a few words w/
@KamalaHarris
@essencefest
was not only an honor, but an encouragement to continue to do the work that Black women have done for decades.
Meme-ingful thoughts happening on the CCSN blog! 🪩
Several core members introduce themselves & comment on the role of memes & creator culture in the US Presidential Election.
Are you brat enough to read & share?
I research shitposting. Though we can trace its origins to the bowels of the Web, it’s not necessarily a *bad* mode of mass communication. It can be really effective for politicians reaching out to younger voters… (see Fetterman’s 2022 senate campaigns team.)
shooting my shot: available to speak on the record with journalists covering whatever is happening with t*ylor s*ift and her fandom rn bc boy do I have some hot takes
Instead of going to “traditional” primary sources on election information, we’re going to see voters turn to memes or shitposts as political sources. We saw this yesterday with Charli xcx’s “Kamala is Brat” tweet. The popcravification of political media, if you will.
@kristnmerrilees
Also ties girlhood to rituals of temporary consumption: if one aligns oneself with these particular products, they have achieved girlhood?
who are the four writers/theorists/thinkers who are most influential on your own work and thinking? mine are probably christina sharpe, stuart hall, raymond williams, and judith butler