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

Professor and TMAC Director Anya Schiffrin and co-author Harris Mateen write about how news organizations can get Meta and Facebook to pay them a fair deal, and have calculated that this number is in the billions of dollars.

Nov 14 2023
The Conversation
Technology & Innovation

Professor and TMAC Director Anya Schiffrin with co-authors Dr. Patrick Holder and Dr. Haris Tabakovic, estimate the amount of money that Meta and Google should pay US news publishers for the value of the journalism and information they produce.

Nov 12 2023
Tech Policy Press
Inclusive Prosperity

A study coauthored by Anya Schiffrin says current agreements between the major platforms and news publishers “do not capture the full value generated by news content.”

Nov 08 2023
Seattle Times

Governments are asking whether Google and Facebook are paying their fair share to news publishers for the news disseminated on their platforms. A new study coauthored by Columbia SIPA Professor Anya Schiffrin finds that Google and Meta may owe news organizations $11-14 billion.

Nov 06 2023
Daily Maverick

Professor Anya Schiffrin and Brigitte Alfter examine government funds that support journalism in the funders’ country and summarise how such funds are designed and allocated, providing examples from around the world.

Oct 20 2023
Global Forum for Media Development