User:Ctwilkinson1/sandbox/Jade E. Davis

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Jade E. Davis is a research scholar best known for her research into how modern technology and virtual spaces affect society and culture^[1]. She currently works as the director of Digital Project Management at Columbia University Libraries and has previously worked as the program director for ePortfolio and as the associate director for digital learning in the Center for Teaching and Learning at LaGuardia Community College CUNY ^[1]. In her work she has focused on comparing digital and analogue culture through the lens of race, gender, modern society, ethics, surveillance, and intertextuality^[2].

Davis holds a PhD in Communication studies and performance art from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, with a Masters of Art degree in French Studies from New York University and a bachelor of arts degree in French from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa^[2].

Davis wrote her dissertation on how knowledge is accessed in the age of technology with her projects 2000 Followers, 31,000 Readers, 190 Countries: Digital Practice as Scholarship using Vintage Black Beauties, an archive cite that celebrates the women of the black diaspora in a vintage style^[3], as a case study^[4]. The main focus of the project was on the transition from analogue technology to digital in society and culture ^[4]. Davis achieves this by using the Google analytics of Vintage Black Beauties to see how many people are seeing her posts and where they are seeing them from without the use of advertising ^[5]. Through this, Davis was able to analyze the organic distribution of information through digital means ^[5].

Davis has written many academic papers and has lead many projects having to do with technology and its role in culture.

In this work, Davis analyzes the different responses to two different images that circulated online at roughly the same time through the context surrounding the images ^[6].

The first image depicts a Catholic schoolgirl named Heliani posing for a book entitled Eve Noire. The image features Heliani naked surrounded by white men in safari clothes . Davis discovered the image in the French National Archives online and posted it on social media. The paper goes over whether or not this was the right decision to make and if Davis had the right to post this photograph on her social media. The paper also goes through the response to the image, namely a comment Davis heard during the Question and Answer section of a conference presentation in which someone in the audience said "She can’t be Catholic! She’s naked!”, and argued that while she was a naked model this didn't mean that she wasn't also a Catholic schoolgirl. Davis then goes on to talk about how this comment represented how the modern world views black women as simple and how the modern world doesn't consider any other narrative other than the one presented to them ^[6].

Davis then went on to show the same photograph of Heliani from a different and more empowering angle with just a black background, which Davis cites as portraying a different side of Heliani's narrative that is more accessible to a modern audience because it doesn't accurately depict the realities and difficulties of colonial era black diaspora ^[6].

The second image Davis analyzes depicts a black wet nurse in slavery era America, breast feeding a baby. In a similar way, Davis noted that people who view the image do not see anything other than the context that they are familiar with and what is presented within the photograph, however in this case the image represents a history and context that is already very well known to American audiences, not for who the nurse in the image is but as a "Mammy" that is easily recognizable in popular culture. Davis argues that because of this link to popular culture, the image is even more detached from the humanity of the subject ^[6].

In this project, Davis responds to Coursera's "Signature Track", an algorithm that analyzes the typing habits of its users so that it can determine if the person typing is a verified user, and how it affects modern Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)^[7]. Davis argues that the signature track is another way that MOOCs separate the public from the content they create, likening MOOCs to social media sites such as Facebook or Twitter, but instead of the site dealing in social connections it deals in education, something that Davis refers to as something that has been "institutionalized socially as extremely valuable"^[8].

Davis takes issue with this, stating that most of the users of MOOCs are not students of the institutions being represented in MOOCs, and that the added verification only serves to further separate the public from fair access to education.

In this work, Davis analyzes the death of Walter Scott, a black man who was shot in the back by a police officer and who's death was caught on camera by a bystander ^[9], and states that these videos of police shootings have become the modern equivalent of the "Girls Gone Wild" videos that where prevalent in the 1990s ^[10].

The article criticizes the lack of content warnings on articles that show excessive violence on news sites, as well as the abundance of these types of stories that have become so prevalent. David states that these videos are as popular as "Girls Gone Wild" videos used to be, stating that they both tap into the same kind of "forbidden desire". Davis likens shooting videos to the snuff films that where made in the 1970s, stating that "The black man’s death is repeated, reproduced, shared, and celebrated in a macabre way" under the guise of journalistic reporting ^[10].

Davis also stated that while "Girls Gone Wild" where designed to be paid for whereas news stories are not, that this doesn't disprove her point and instead that this is just evidence of a change in times. Davis states that modern websites don't rely on consumers paying with cash but instead with clicks, which she determines is the reason why these kinds of stories are so quickly and prolifically published ^[10].

Davis criticizes such news organizations for their overuse of sensationalism without content advisory warnings, stating that even the "Girls Gone Wild" videos had content warnings ^[10].

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