Clare O’Gara is a PhD candidate in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin — Madison.

I study what people make and do with and through digital technologies. My work broadly explores how power contours the conditions, cultural objects, and ideological frameworks by which people attach their bodies, identities, beliefs, and fantasies to “new media.” As a cultural studies scholar, my approach to media literacy extends critical attention to texts, performances, and subjectivities historically dismissed as frivolous, artless, and unruly.

My additional research interests include: discourses of media consumption; micro-celebrity, social media entertainment, and the influencer industry; platform and interface studies; alternative internet histories; representations of artificial intelligence; gender and sexuality studies; sports and fitness media.