Biography

C.W. Anderson is a Professor of Media and Communication at the University of Leeds. Prior to that, he was an Associate Professor of Media Culture at the City University of New York (CUNY). He studies the manner in which journalism acts as a producer of “public knowledge,” both historically and in the 21st century, as well as the manner by which technological, economic, political, and cultural changes are shaping the news industry.

Anderson has just concluded a large-scale research project on the manner by which American journalists have used data in news reporting from the late 19th century until the present, paying particular attention to the invention of Computer Assisted Reporting in the 1960s and computational journalism in the 21st century. His new project examines how these and other forms of high-end factual reporting navigate a political world seemingly governed by emotion, passion, and cultural identity.

Anderson is the author, co-author, or co-editor of five books: Rebuilding the News: Metropolitan Journalism in the Digital Age (Temple University Press), Remaking the News (with Pablo Boczkowski, The MIT Press), The Sage Handbook of Digital Journalism (with Tamara Witschge, David Domingo, and Alfred Hermida, Sage) and Journalism: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Len Downie and Michael Schudson, Oxford University Press) and Apostles of Certainty: Data Journalism and the Politics of Doubt (Oxford University Press.) He has also published articles in a number of top-ranked academic journals, including Political Communication, New Media and Society, Journalism, Journalism Studies, Qualitative Sociology, Social Media and Society, and the International Journal of Communication. He has also written for a number of other popular journals and magazines, including Nieman Lab, the Columbia Journalism Review, and The Atlantic.

Anderson received his PhD from the Columbia University School of Journalism, where he remains an advisory board member at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism. He is an Associate Editor of the International Journal of Press/Politics, and as of October, directs the PhD program in Media and Communication here at Leeds.