Youngrim Kim is an assistant professor of Media Studies at Rutgers School of Communication and Information. Her work, situated at the intersection of digital media studies, critical data studies, and science and technology studies, focuses on the politics of datafication and platform governance in East Asia. She uses qualitative and interpretive methods to explore how digital platforms and data-driven systems shape statecraft and civic life. Specifically, Kim examines how large-scale data practices—such as pandemic surveillance technologies or environmental monitoring systems—become instruments of governance that transform notions of public interest, citizenship, and belonging. She also explores the reverse dynamic by studying grassroots engagement with these data infrastructures. Kim’s current book project, Suspicious By Design: Pandemic Surveillance, Data Publics, and Coded Injustice in South Korea (tentative title), is a critical cultural examination of South Korea’s data-driven governance of infectious disease outbreaks from the 2015 MERS epidemic to COVID-19. Kim holds a Ph.D. in Communication and Media from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, is currently a faculty affiliate at the Rutgers Climate and Energy Institute and the Global Asias Initiative, and was previously a fellow at the American Association of University Women (AAUW).