I’m Krysten Stein, PhD (she/her), a scholar of platform governance, creator culture, and digital care. My research examines how contemporary media systems transform mental health, identity, emotional labor, and therapeutic discourse into forms of visibility, value, and control. Across my work, I study how platforms shape the production, circulation, and governance of care online.
Grounded in feminist media studies and platform studies, I focus on digital platforms and media industries, including TikTok, reality television, creator economies, and networked cultures of visibility. My research explores how algorithms, moderation systems, monetization structures, and engagement metrics shape credibility, participation, labor, and emotional life under platform capitalism.
A central area of my scholarship examines the rise of mental health content online. I conceptualize this broader media-cultural formation as theratainment: the convergence of therapeutic discourse and entertainment logics across contemporary media culture, where emotional disclosure, self-work, healing, and psychological expertise become organized through visibility, affect, and audience engagement. Within theratainment, my work examines what I call the care paradox: the structural contradiction in which care becomes increasingly visible and emotionally accessible while the material conditions necessary to sustain care continue to deteriorate. I also develop concepts including ambient caregiving, which describes the always-on circulation of care as an affective platform environment; compulsory care labor, the expectation that creators remain emotionally accessible and responsive as a condition of visibility; and trustwork, the ongoing labor required to produce and maintain credibility under algorithmic and platform conditions.
Methodologically, I work primarily with qualitative, feminist, and critical-cultural approaches, including in-depth interviews, discourse analysis, and digital ethnography. My scholarship bridges platform governance, creator economies, feminist media studies, television and popular culture, and digital mental health research.
My research has appeared in journals including Feminist Media Studies, Gender & Society, International Journal of Communication, European Journal of Cultural Studies, and Convergence. My first book, And How Does That Make You Feel? Theratainment and the Digital Commodification of Mental Health (University of California Press, under contract), examines how platform power, emotional labor, and visibility economies reshape care into cultural production.
Beyond academia, I collaborate with journalists, researchers, and organizations on questions of platform accountability, creator culture, digital labor, and care ethics. My work has been featured in outlets including NBC News, CNN, Business Insider, and The Guardian.
I am a Research Affiliate with the Intersectional Technology Lab in the School of Information at the University of Michigan and the Center on Digital Culture and Society at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. I also serve as Social Media Editor for Feminist Media Studies, sit on the editorial board of Creator & Influencer Studies, and am a co-founder of the Content Creator Scholars Network.
I am currently an Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of Cincinnati Blue Ash College. Across my scholarship, teaching, and public engagement, I am committed to care-centered, justice-oriented, and evidence-based approaches to understanding contemporary media and platform systems.
Where platforms, power, and care collide 