I’m Krysten Stein, PhD (she/her), a scholar of platform governance, digital culture, and care. My research examines how contemporary media systems transform mental health, identity, and emotional labor into forms of visibility, value, and control. I study how platforms shape the visibility, governance, and commercialization of care online. My work focuses on digital platforms and media industries, including TikTok, reality television, and creator economies, as sites where care is produced, circulated, and governed.
My research argues that mental health content has emerged as a distinct media genre shaped by platform logics, which I conceptualize as theratainment: the transformation of care into content, entertainment, and cultural labor. Grounded in feminist media studies, I examine how platform rules, metrics, and monetization structures shape credibility, responsibility, and what I call trustwork, the ongoing labor of performing authenticity and care under algorithmic conditions. Using qualitative and ethnographic methods, I translate lived experience into insights that inform research, education, policy, and public discourse.
My work has appeared in Feminist Media Studies, Gender & Society, and International Journal of Communication, among others. 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 and organizations on questions of platform accountability, digital labor, and care ethics. My work has been featured in NBC News, The Guardian, Business Insider, and CNN.
I am a Research Affiliate with the Intersectional Technology Lab at the University of Michigan and the Center on Digital Culture and Society 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 co-founded the Content Creator Scholars Network.
I am currently an Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of Cincinnati Blue Ash College. Across my work, I am guided by care-centered, justice-oriented, and evidence-based approaches to understanding contemporary media and platform systems.
Where platforms, power, and care collide 