Assistant Professor

T:778-782-5273
E: sganter@sfu.ca
Room: K9672

Sarah Anne Ganter (PhD, University of Vienna, 2017) is a tenure-track Assistant Professor at the School of Communication. She was previously a research fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford, UK, and a pre-doctoral researcher at the Department of Communication at the University of Vienna, Austria. She is an expert in the areas of media governance and media policy in the digital era, content industries, comparative and cross-border research. Her expertise includes analyzing media and digital policy transformations from a theoretical perspective that focuses on the dynamics and interactions shaping institutional fields. Dr. Ganter’ s work is influenced by a cosmopolitan approach to academic work, integrating scholarly work from different cultural, linguistic and geographical academic settings.

Dr. Ganter has published in New Media and Society, Digital Journalism, The International Journal of Communication, The European Journal of Communication, The Information Society, The Qualitative Report, Medien Journal and in various international book projects. Her co-authored book “The Power of Platforms: Shaping Media and Society” is published with Oxford University Press (2022). It is the first book-length treatment of the power of technology platforms over news and media and brings together work from journalism, platform studies, political science, and economics to understand the entanglements between platforms and publishers.

Her second book is a co-edited volume, "Media Governance: A Cosmopolitan Critique" and published in the Palgrave/ IAMCR Global Transformations in Media and Communication Research Series. Through its fourteen chapters, the volume offers a critical map to navigate the field of Media Governance and establishes Cosmopolitan Critique as a decentering methodological approach by introducing ‘cosmopolitan iteration’. 

Dr. Ganter is a Research Associate at the Reuters Institute for Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford and a member of several communication studies associations, such as the German Communication Association (DGPuK), the International Communication Association (ICA) and Global Internet Governance Academic Network (GigaNet). She served four years as the YECREA Communication Law and Policy representative and regularly works as reviewer for internationally ranked journals and conferences such as The International Journal of Communication, Communication Theory, The Journal of Communication, Journalism Practice, New Media and Society, The European Journal of Communication, Convergence, The International Journal of Press/Politics, The International Journal of Qualitative Methods, ICA, IAMCR and ECREA.

For a complete overview over Dr. Ganter ́s research, please consult her Google Scholar and Research Gate profiles or  her personal website.

Prospective students:

If you are interested in pursuing graduate studies at Simon Fraser University in the fields of communication and cultural policy, platform governance, journalism cultures, media structures or de-westernization of media and communication studies please contact me at sganter@sfu.ca.

At the moment, I am specifically interested in working with candidates (MA and PhD) in the following thematic areas:

• platform policy discourses (see e.g. this and this article and ongoing work from my SSHRC grant)
• platformed journalism and counter power initiatives (see my e.g. my book)
• independent journalism and ‘positive dependence’ (see e.g. my article)
• cultural industries in acute crisis and digital acceleration (see e.g. forthcoming work)
• academic cosmopolitanism and epistemic transformation (see several of my articles and book chapters and my new book)

Read here for more information on the application process and graduate studies in the School of Communication at the SFU. Whilst I can voice support for a candidate (and I am happy to do so if it’s a good fit and the candidate has a strong profile!) candidates are ultimately selected by a committee at school level.

• PhD in Journalism and Communication (Universität Wien, Austria)
• MA in International Communications (University of Leeds, UK)
• MA in Intercultural Business Management (Universidad del Salvador, Buenos Aires, Argentina)
• MA in Cultural Area Studies, Economics and Applied Languages (Universität Passau, Germany)

• Media and communication governance in the global content industries
• Platforms and challenges for content industries and regulatory power
• Academic cosmopolitanism