Clare O’Gara is a PhD student 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 and cultural objects by which human beings appear, fail to appear, and appear unevenly across and beyond cyberspace. I believe that effective media literacy extends critical attention to texts, performances, embodiments, and subjectivities historically dismissed as frivolous and artless.

My additional research interests include: micro-celebrity, social media entertainment, and the influencer industry; platform and interface studies; alternative internet histories; queer and trans identity, theory, and culture; sports and fitness media.