معرفی
Stephen Ostertag is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Tulane University's School of Liberal Arts and an affiliated faculty member of the Tulane Violence Prevention Institute (VPI). His research examines digital media's role in civil society formation, particularly through post-Hurricane Katrina blogging networks in New Orleans.
His educational background includes:
- Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut
Professor Ostertag's research centers on Cultural Sociology, Media Sociology, Cognition, Crime and Incarceration, and Social Control. He investigates how online communities construct civil purification narratives, frame social problems through moral foundations, and influence political institutions during disaster recovery. His work integrates civil sphere theory with digital ethnography to analyze processes of civil exclusion and inclusion.
His publications from 2013-2021 reveal consistent thematic evolution: early work established how Katrina bloggers created cultural trauma narratives through digital mediation, progressing to examinations of civil purification in journalism, then expanding into racialized civil exclusion frameworks. Recent scholarship analyzes social media's cultural affordances for social drama performance and news as relational practice, demonstrating increasing theoretical sophistication in connecting micro-interactions to macro-social structures.
He teaches undergraduate courses in media sociology, criminology, and deviant behavior, including service-learning partnerships with the Orleans Public Defenders (indigent defense) and Justice and Accountability Center of Louisiana (reentry programs). His community engagement extends to board service at The Lens news organization, teaching at McDonogh 35 high school, and media commentary on WDSU and The Louisiana Weekly.
Professor Ostertag's research team collaborates with community organizations through the Tulane Violence Prevention Institute, focusing on digital media's role in shaping post-disaster civic engagement. His longitudinal study of Katrina bloggers examines how online networks develop shared identities and transition to offline collective action influencing city-wide policy making.
