Anya Schiffrin
Senior Lecturer in Discipline of International and Public Affairs
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
Anya Schiffrin said “It's these really large American companies that are scooping up information and then doing deals secretly with certain publishers that they choose to speak to" about the relationship between LLMs and publishers.
Anya Schiffrin said “they [Big Tech] really, really hate these laws. And they’re doing whatever they can to stop them.”
Anya Schiffrin and Joseph E. Stiglitz write on how high-quality journalism has a positive influence on democratic norms, civic engagement, and governmental and corporate accountability.
Anya Schiffrin, and co-author Dylan Groves, write that their research has identified roughly 90 different ways to measure impact, but the reality is that newsrooms usually look at just a few.
Anya Schiffrin writes that AI companies need quality information, and that news publishers have it. Should they share it, and how much should they get for it?