Dr. Krysten Stein (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of Cincinnati Blue Ash College. She holds a Ph.D. in Communication and Media Studies from the University of Illinois Chicago, with concentrations in Gender and Women’s Studies and Black Studies, as well as an M.A. and B.A. in Communication from the University of Cincinnati, where she also completed a Graduate Certificate in Film and Media Studies and minors in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Psychology.
Stein’s research examines how digital media and popular culture reflect and shape social life through the lenses of gender, race, labor, and affect. Grounded in qualitative and ethnographic methods—including interviews, participant observation, and textual and visual analysis—her work explores representation and identity, production and political economy, and the platformization of care across reality television, influencer culture, and digital mental health. Her scholarship has appeared in Feminist Media Studies, Gender & Society, International Journal of Communication, and Queer Studies in Media & Popular Culture.
Her first book, And How Does That Make You Feel? Theratainment and the Digital Commodification of Mental Health (under contract with University of California Press), analyzes how platform governance, neoliberal ideology, and emotional labor intersect in the rise of mental-health content creators and “therapy entertainment.”
Stein is a Research Affiliate with the Intersectional Tech Lab at the University of Michigan’s School of Information and the Center on Digital Culture and Society (CDCS) at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania. She is Social Media Editor for Feminist Media Studies and a co-founding member of the Content Creator Scholars Network. Her expertise has been featured in NBC News, The Guardian, Business Insider, and CNN, and she regularly presents at ICA, AoIR, SCMS, and Console-ing Passions.
With over a decade of experience teaching and mentoring across institutional contexts, Stein brings a relational, care-based, and justice-oriented pedagogy to the classroom. Her courses in communication, media literacy, and digital culture emphasize critical media analysis, experiential learning, and community-building to help students connect theory, creativity, and lived experience.
communication professor sharing her work on the interwebs 