Youngrim Kim
Assistant Professor of Journalism and Media Studies
Faculty, PhD JMS Faculty
Biography
Drawing on digital media studies, critical data studies, and science and technology studies, Youngrim Kim examines the politics of datafication and platform governance from global and transnational perspectives. Using qualitative and interpretive methods, she examines how digital platforms and data-driven systems shape state practices and civic life. Her research highlights how large-scale data infrastructures—such as pandemic surveillance technologies and environmental monitoring systems—function as instruments of governance that reconfigure ideas of public interest, citizenship, and belonging. She also analyzes the reverse dynamic: how grassroots actors engage with, contest, or reimagine these systems. Broadly, her research program centers on three interconnected areas: (1) data politics and governance, (2) the geopolitics of digital infrastructures, and (3) global media cultures.
Kim’s research has appeared in leading journals in communication and information studies, including Big Data & Society, New Media & Society, Information, Communication & Society, International Journal of Communication, Communication, Culture & Critique, and Journalism. Her scholarship has been recognized with awards from the International Communication Association, ProQuest, and the Rutgers Research Council, as well as an international fellowship from the American Association of University Women.
Her current book project, tentatively titled Infrastructures of Vilification: Pandemic Surveillance, Co-opted Publics, and Coded Injustice in South Korea, offers a critical analysis of South Korea’s data-driven governance during public health emergencies, focusing on the 2015 MERS outbreak and the COVID-19 pandemic. Her next project turns to transnational e-commerce platforms—such as Amazon Storefront, TikTok shop, Temu, and Naver Smartstore—to examine the politics of cross-border digital logistics infrastructures.
Education
Ph.D., Communication and Media, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
M.A., Communication, Seoul National University
B.A., Media studies, University of California, Berkeley
Rutgers Affiliations