Alfred Hermida

Artificial intelligence (AI) has rapidly evolved from narrow, task-specific systems into complex technologies embedded in social, political, and economic infrastructures. As AI expands, its definition has shifted from a purely technical concept to a deeply sociopolitical and geopolitical one, raising critical concerns related to transparency, accountability, algorithmic bias, privacy, surveillance, and its broader impact on democracy, government communication, and freedom of expression. However, these risks are not distributed equally across the globe. Structural inequalities, resource disparities, and geopolitical differences have contributed to the emergence of an “AI divide” and a broader digital divide, disproportionately affecting countries outside the Global North.This thesis examines these inequalities through a comparative analysis of AI governance in the European Union (EU) and Turkey. While the EU has established a comprehensive, rights-based regulatory framework grounded in democratic accountability and fundamental rights, Turkey represents a hybrid case as an emerging economy, EU candidate country, and NATO member operating under different institutional and political conditions. Using qualitative comparative analysis of policy documents, regulatory frameworks, and governance mechanisms, this study investigates how AI governance is shaped across these contexts. It focuses on three key areas: ethical and regulatory frameworks, transparency and oversight mechanisms, and the implications of AI governance for democratic accountability and freedom of expression.The findings demonstrate that AI governance models are not universally transferable and are deeply shaped by geopolitical and institutional contexts. While the EU prioritizes risk-based regulation, independent oversight, and rights protections, Turkey relies on centralized, state-aligned institutions, where AI technologies can be used to reinforce existing power structures. These differences highlight how Global North-centric regulatory models may not function effectively in different contexts and can exacerbate existing inequalities.This thesis argues that the absence of a universal AI governance framework, combined with fragmented global approaches, reinforces power asymmetries and leaves countries like Turkey more vulnerable to the risks of AI. It concludes that more inclusive, context-sensitive, and globally equitable approaches to AI governance are necessary to address the growing AI divide.

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In 2023, Canada experienced one of the worst wildfire seasons in its history, with over 16.5 million hectares of land being burnt. These record-breaking wildfires required evacuations, posed physical and mental health risks, and required multiple levels of government emergency response. As wildfires have become increasingly intense, scientists have come to the consensus that climate change is a factor which is contributing to the worsening of these fires through increased global temperatures, changing seasonal patterns, and increased droughts. Media coverage of the wildfires combined event-driven reporting and climate journalism. Climate journalism has been an area of rapid change in journalism studies. Climate journalism has been moving away from previous ideas of objectivity and bothsidesism, and instead moving towards a subjective stance where climate change is not treated as a subjective ideal, but is instead treated as an objective fact, changing the way that different voices in climate journalism are represented. Climate journalism aligns with journalistic sourcing practices as certain groups, such as government officials, receive high media representation, and other groups experience less representation. This research project explored how different sources are represented in the 2023 Canadian wildfire media coverage, using both quantitative and qualitative analysis. It investigated which sources were the most likely to assert a connection between climate change and wildfires, and to understand how reluctance and skepticism are represented. Findings suggest that skeptic voice presence in media is decreasing, and that event-driven crisis reporting platforms a microcosm of dominant government sources. The results advance an understanding of how science communication is represented by sources, and which sources contribute to shaping the current representation of climate change in the media during a crisis event.

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Media and feminist scholars argue that journalism has been a white male bastion, and the norms and practices of journalism reflect its context. Prior research also indicates that minority journalists often have to withhold their racial identity and personal experiences to comply with the professional norms and values of journalism. Informed by Critical Race Theory (CRT), this thesis investigates the professional lived experience of journalists from racialized backgrounds in Canada regarding unorthodox journalism practices, relationality as racialized professionals, and early-career experiences. By conducting seven semi-structured interviews with early-career Asian Canadian journalists, this study identified four main themes: (1) journalists challenge traditional journalism practices through endorsing trauma-informed journalism, which values building rapport with sources and minimizing harm; (2) positionality and intersectionality impact their news judgement, values, and journalism practice; and evidence suggests that racialized journalists have formed a robust and supportive network of connections; (3) early-career journalists are vulnerable to precarious employment; (4) there is still a lack of representation of racialized people in editorial positions. This thesis highlights the significance of trauma-informed journalism and argues that further research in this area could yield new possibilities for journalism ethics and practice.

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The impeachment of Brazil’s former president Dilma Rousseff on August 31, 2016 points to the end of a cycle in Brazilian politics (Domingues, 2016). Many Brazilians have lost their trust in institutional politics, and no longer feel represented (Barbosa, 2015; Barbosa et al, 2016; Da Luz, 2015; Domingues, 2016; Friedman, E. J. & Hochstetler, K., 2002). In a sense, it is a clash of the new Brazil with the old (Ituassu, 2013). A series of mass demonstrations have taken the streets of Brazil since 2013, representing the tipping point of a new wave of social movements in the country (Telles, 2016). New opportunities arise for civil disobedience and experimentation, and social media has been deemed as playing a crucial role in this ongoing process — a counter-narrative to traditional, Brazilian mainstream media, and a successful venue for connecting civil society to the political sphere (Ituassu, 2013). Among the groups that have emerged as key actors during this recent period of protests is Mídia NINJA, a reference to ancient Japanese warriors and an acronym for Independent Narratives Journalism and Action, a non-corporate, non-profit media group run by citizen journalists spread across over 100 cities in Brazil (Mídia NINJA, n.d.), with more than 2,000 collaborators. Armed with smartphones and video cameras, the group has sought to shape the news agenda by engaging millions of people online and articulating a counter-narrative to corporate media. This research project explores how the new online media ecology, made possible by the advent of the Internet, disrupts and inaugurate new possibilities for journalism, civic engagement and social justice activism through a case study of Mídia NINJA, utilizing both computational and manual methods of data gathering and interpretation (Hermida et al., 2013).

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Using the 2004 Southeast Asian tsunami as a case study, this paper considers how naturaldisasters are covered in the media in order to develop a better understanding of disasterreporting. The analysis builds upon Alexa Robertson’s 2008 study of television coverage of the tsunami. Data was collected through a content analysis of three daily Canadian newspapers in thethree months immediately following the tsunami. The findings show that although there are somenotable differences between newspapers, simply catering to the same type of audience (i.e.national) is no guarantee that coverage from different newspapers will produce similar trends.However, the research did identify four trends across the three newspapers studied: pieces thatare framed as political stories and critical of the government are not necessarily fuelled byinherent political bias, at least with regard to a foreign natural disaster; in the immediateaftermath of a disaster, the abundance of dramatic stories that can be told raises the thresholdwith regard to the level of drama a disaster story must have in order to be printed; recoverystories are generally re-framed as aid stories, thereby making it easier to relate the story to theaudience, and; there does not seem to be any pattern to when a disaster disappears fromnewspapers’ front pages, as even an anniversary commemorating a disaster is no assurance offront page coverage. This study found that although narrative arcs in disaster reporting follow similar patterns across newspapers, other aspects of disaster coverage – such as the quantity or location of coverage – vary from newspaper to newspaper.

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