Asmaa Malik
Asmaa Malik鈥檚 research and teaching interests focus on journalism innovation, equity in media and collaborative approaches to graduate supervision. With her research partner, Gavin Adamson, she is the co-recipient of 2020 Google News Initiative Innovation Challenge funding to develop an AI-powered tool that assesses news sourcing and along with her colleague Sonya Fatah she is working on a SSHRC-funded project to create a diversity survey for Canadian newsrooms. She is also the Velma Rogers Research Co-Chair at the School of Journalism. She has held several editorial leadership roles at the Montreal Gazette and Toronto Star and her work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Walrus and Toronto Star. and Facebook neighbourhood groups first appeared in the Coach House Books anthology, .
Building artificial-intelligence-powered tools to improve transparency in news:
Along with my Journalism colleague Gavin Adamson, and in collaboration with professors Dr. Eric Harley and Dr. Cherie Ding in Computer Science, we were awarded in 2020 to develop the (JeRI), a natural-language processing software application that helps hold journalists accountable for who they quote in their stories. For our pilot phase, we are working with the Winnipeg Free Press and research partner Karyn Pugliese to analyze coverage of Indigenous communities in the Free Press鈥� news reporting.
Creating more inclusive ways to measure diversity in Canada鈥檚 newsrooms:
My colleague Sonya Fatah and I were awarded a in 2020 to work with the Canadian Centre for Diversity and Inclusion to develop a self-reporting survey to assess equity and inclusion in Canadian newsrooms. The project takes a qualitative approach to measuring the culture of these news organizations. This builds upon the work we鈥檝e done at the Toronto Star, National Post and The Globe and Mail. Our research found that over the 21-year-period we studied, as the proportion of white people in Canada鈥檚 population declined, the representation of white columnists increased.
Exploring solutions-focused approaches to graduate supervision:
As the 2019 Yeates School of Graduate Studies/Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching Scholar in Residence, I began researching the role of empathy, equity and expectations in graduate supervision. The following year, I partnered with my Professional Communication colleague Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching Fellow Dr. Yukari Seko on a project that builds upon . We鈥檝e launched a Community of Practice and facilitated workshops for supervisors as well as for graduate students.
Researching, designing and launching news innovation incubators:
The two digital news innovation incubators I have helped research, design and launch both here in Canada (, a partnership with the School of Journalism, the DMZ and the Facebook Journalism Project) and in South Africa (, a partnership with X University, the University of the Witswatersrand and Journalists for Human Rights) bring together journalists, technologists and entrepreneurs to build real-world solutions to industry challenges. In addition to fostering social entrepreneurship through the centering of marginalized communities, both initiatives create new actionable research and strengthen opportunities for international collaboration.
Understanding the impact of digital news processes on issues of representation:
As with JeRI, transparency in digital news and understanding how marginalized communities are portrayed in the media are a key focus. My of Canadian digital media coverage of the 2017 passage of Bill 62, the so-called 鈥渘iqab ban,鈥� found that the rigorous photo standards news organizations applied to print media, such as identifying the subject and naming the location of the photo, .
Experimenting with new forms of open-access, interactive scholarship:
At a time when issues of trust and accountability are at the forefront, the need for journalism scholars and practitioners to learn from each other鈥檚 work has never been more urgent As co-editor of the SSHRC-funded, open-access multimedia volume, , I helped research, create and launch a peer-reviewed, scholarly publication that brings together timely insights from leading researchers presented in traditional scholarly article formats, as well as in the forms of interactive maps, podcasts and videos, so that the work can be widely distributed and shared by both scholars and members of the general public.