Stephen Ostertag

Selected Publications

Ostertag, Stephen F. and David G. Ortiz. 2013. “The Battle over Meaning: Digitally Mediated Processes of Cultural Trauma and Repair in the Wake of Hurricane Katrina.” The American Journal of Cultural Sociology. 1(2): 186-220.

Ostertag, Stephen, F. 2014. “Becoming Pure: The Civil Sphere, Media Practices and Constructing Civil Purification.” Cultural Sociology. 8(1): 45-62.

Ostertag, Stephen F. 2016. “Expressions of right and wrong: The emergence of a cultural structure of journalism.” In The Crisis of Journalism Reconsidered: Democratic Culture, Professional Codes, Digital Future. Jeffrey C. Alexander, Elizabeth Breese, and Maria Luengo (eds.). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Ostertag, Stephen F. and David G. Ortiz. 2017. “Can Users of Social Media Produce Enduring Social Ties? Affordances and the Case of Katrina Bloggers.” Qualitative Sociology. 40(1): 59-82.

Ostertag, Stephen, F. and Lucas Dìaz. 2017. “A Critical Strong Program: Cultural Power and Racialized Civil Exclusion.” American Journal of Cultural Sociology.5(1): 34-67.

Ostertag, Stephen F. 2020. “News as Relational Social Practice.” International Journal of Communication. Available online (invited submission for a special issue on media practices).

Ostertag, Stephen F. 2021. “Social Drama and the Cultural Affordances of Social Media.” Cultural Sociology. Available online.

Courses Taught

I have taught a number of courses in media and cultural sociology, criminology, and deviant behavior, as well as several special topics courses (e.g., Media, Crime and Justice; Cognitive Sociology; Race, Crime and Control). I also taught a range of different students, including both traditional and non-traditional, and students of various intellectual strengths, ages, and social/cultural backgrounds (including an introductory sociology course at a New Orleans public high school). Finally, I teach two service-learning courses; a Criminology course in which students work with the Orleans Public Defenders on indigent defense in New Orleans, and a special topic course titled Race, Crime and Control, in which students work with the Justice and Accountability Center of Louisiana on reentry and recidivism practices and policies.

Public Sociology and Social Entrepreneurship

Outside the academy, I served on the board of The Lens, a New Orleans-based online news organization that emerged in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. I taught an introductory sociology course at McDonogh 35 high school, a well-known New Orleans public high school located in the city's Treme neighborhood, and was a panelist at the 2011 annual Rising Tide conference, which is a city-wide event organized by "Katrina bloggers" to critique the city's rebuilding and recovery efforts. Finally, I have contributed to a number of more mainstream news outlets, including discussing youth homelessness on WDSU evening television news and New Orleans homicides in The Louisiana Weekly (the city's traditionally African-American weekly newspaper).