Anya Schiffrin

Anya Schiffrin

Senior Lecturer in Discipline of International and Public Affairs

Anya Schiffrin

International Affairs Building, Room 1319

212-854-7188


Personal Details

Focus areas: Media, development, innovation, media in Africa and the extractive sector

Anya Schiffrin is a senior lecturer in the discipline of international and public affairs and faculty co-director of the Technology Policy and Innovation (TPI) concentration at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. She previously directed the Technology, Media, and Communications (TMaC) specialization and teaches courses on global media, innovation, and human rights. Dr. Schiffrin writes on journalism and development, investigative reporting in the global south and has published extensively over the last decade on the media in Africa. More recently she has become focused on solutions to the problem of online disinformation, earning her PhD (with honors) on the topic from the University of Navarra.  She is the editor of Women in the Digital World, (Routledge, April 2023) Global Muckraking: 100 Years of Investigative Reporting from Around the World (New Press, 2014) and African Muckraking: 75 years of Investigative journalism from Africa (Jakana 2017) She is the editor of Media Capture: How Money, Digital Platforms and Governments Control the News (Columbia University Press 2021.) Her research with economist Haaris Mateen on the valuation of news has been cited in the Atlantic, Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Washington Post and many other publications. She is a leading thinker and commentator on AI and publishing, media sustainability as well as mis/disinformation and media impact.

Education

  • PhD with honors, University of Navarra
  • MS, Columbia University, School of Journalism
  • BA, Reed College

Affiliations

  • Natural  Resource Governance Initiative
  • Global  Reporting Center,  University of British Columbia
  • Initiative for Policy Dialogue (IPD)
  • Thomson  Reuters Foundation (US)
  • Founder, www.journalismtraining.net
  • Media &  Journalism Research Center, University of Santiago (Spain)

Research And Publications

In The Media

Technology & Innovation

According to senior lecturer Anya Schiffrin, AI chatbots are siphoning traffic from news sites, but the current process for demanding compensation–suing tech firms–is slow, expensive, and unfair.

Feb 13 2026
Project Syndicate
Technology & Innovation

The basic problem around the world is that the large tech companies have used quality information from newspapers and other creators and haven’t paid for it," said Anya Schiffrin, a senior lecturer and global media expert at Columbia University.

Jan 28 2026
The Mercury News
Technology & Innovation

For Journalism 2050’s inaugural live event, Emily Bell and Heather Chaplin are joined by Azmat Khan, the director of Columbia’s Simon and June Li Center for Global Journalism, and Anya Schiffrin, a professor at the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs, to discuss the consequences of the war on Gaza on journalism and what history can teach us about the role of the press in times of crisis.

Dec 11 2025
Columbia Journalism Review
Technology & Innovation

Anya Schiffrin and Natali Helberger, co-chairs of the Steering Committee, highlighted that “the current concentration of economic, technological and political power in the hands of a few Big Tech platforms that control large parts of the digital information infrastructure is a threat to democracy”.

Oct 22 2025
Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE)
Technology & Innovation

Anya Schiffrin says the battle for compensation is not over. She noted that some lawmakers are debating inserting a ” must-carry” dispositive in future bargaining laws to prevent social media from removing news content to avoid regulation.

Sep 16 2025
Agência Pública