My research examines how digital platforms govern care, labor, visibility, and participation, with particular attention to mental health, creator culture, and gendered and emotional labor. Across projects, I analyze how platform rules, metrics, and monetization structures shape credibility, responsibility, and cultural production in contemporary media systems. This page offers an overview of my research program and ongoing projects. For a complete record of publications, talks, and service, please see my full CV and Google Scholar profile below.
Core Research Areas
- Platform Governance and Digital Care: How platforms structure responsibility, accountability, and care through policies, algorithms, and monetization models.
- Theratainment and Mental Health Media: How therapy, mental health discourse, and care practices become content, labor, and cultural production across digital platforms and reality television.
- Creator Economies, Reality Television, and Media Industries: How visibility, authenticity, and credibility are organized across influencer culture, reality television, and platformed cultural production.
- Feminist and Qualitative Methods for Platform Studies: Ethnographic and qualitative approaches to studying power, identity, labor, and governance in digital systems and media industries.
Research Affiliations
- Intersectional Technology Lab, University of Michigan
- Center on Digital Culture and Society, University of Pennsylvania
- Center for Critical Internet Inquiry (C2i2), UCLA
CV and Profiles
|| my full CV || google scholar ||
Please feel free to email me [steinkn@ucmail.uc.edu] if you need help accessing anything.
Where platforms, power, and care collide 