About the CST

Stephen F. Ostertag

Stephen F. Ostertag is an associate professor of sociology at Tulane University. His interests in media/cultural sociology focus on social media, citizen news, disaster/crisis communication, racism, and punishment. Most of his work engages these as they speak to issues of trust, social identities, attitudes/opinions, boundaries, networks and mobilizations. For the past decade Stephen’s been involved in a study of social media use, culture and action in the extended wake of disaster. His book, Connecting After Chaos: Social Media and Creating order in the Aftermath of Disaster (under contract with NYU Press) reports on a group of New Orleans based bloggers in the years after hurricane Katrina struck the city. It examines the emergence, maintenance and dissipation of this local blogosphere, why people started blogging, what they said and did with their blogs, and why they stopped, as they took part in the response, recovery and rebuilding work.