Professional Summary
Dr. Krysten Stein is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English & Communication at the University of Cincinnati Blue Ash College. Her research examines how contemporary media systems transform mental health, identity, emotional labor, and therapeutic discourse into forms of visibility, value, and control. Across her work, she studies how digital platforms shape the production, circulation, and governance of care online.
Grounded in feminist media studies and platform studies, Stein focuses on digital platforms and media industries, including TikTok, reality television, creator economies, and networked cultures of visibility. Her research explores how algorithms, moderation systems, monetization structures, and visibility metrics shape credibility, participation, labor, and emotional life under platform capitalism.
A central area of her scholarship examines the rise of mental health content online. She conceptualizes this broader media-cultural formation as theratainment: the convergence of therapeutic discourse and entertainment logics across contemporary media culture. Her work also develops concepts including the care paradox, ambient caregiving, compulsory care labor, and trustwork to analyze how care, credibility, and emotional labor operate under platform conditions.
Methodologically, Stein works primarily with qualitative, feminist, and critical-cultural approaches, including interviews, discourse analysis, and digital ethnography. Her scholarship bridges platform governance, creator economies, feminist media studies, television and popular culture, and digital mental health research.
Her research has appeared in Feminist Media Studies, Gender & Society, International Journal of Communication, European Journal of Cultural Studies, Convergence, and Queer Studies in Media & Popular Culture. She is currently completing her first book manuscript, And How Does That Make You Feel? Theratainment and the Digital Commodification of Mental Health (under contract with University of California Press), which examines how platform power, emotional labor, and visibility economies reshape care into cultural production.
Stein is 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. She also serves as Social Media Editor for Feminist Media Studies, sits on the editorial board of Creator & Influencer Studies, and is a co-founder of the Content Creator Scholars Network.
Her work has been featured in media outlets including NBC News, CNN, Business Insider, and The Guardian. With more than a decade of teaching and advising experience, Stein brings a relational and justice-centered approach to the classroom grounded in critical media literacy, care, and community-building.
Education
Master of Arts: University of Cincinnati Cincinnati, Ohio, 2012 (Communication)
Bachelor of Arts: University of Cincinnati Cincinnati, Ohio, 2011 (Major: Communication Minors: Psychology, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies )
Graduate Certificate: University of Cincinnati Cincinnati, 2016 (Film and Media Studies )
PhD: University of Illinois at Chicago Chicago, 2024 (Communication, Gender and Women's Studies, Black Studies)