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.
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.
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).
Cultural Sociology, Media Sociology, Cognition, Crime and Incarceration, Social Control.