Professor Sarah Ganter Awarded Trans-Atlantic Partnership Grant to Research the Meanings of Independence in Journalism

School of Communication professor Sarah Ganter and her international team won one of 18 Trans-Atlantic Partnership Grants in the Democracy, Governance, and Trust call for their project on Independent Journalism’s Epistemologies. These Trans-Atlantic Partnership Grants are awarded to projects across 11 countries to “deepen our understanding of opportunities, challenges, and crises, relevant to democracy, governance and trust.”

The goal of this project is to better understand the importance of independence in journalism. This will be done through a dialogue-based approach across Brazil, Canada, South Africa and UK, as well as participation from colleagues in the Netherlands and the US, to study what independency in journalism means in different countries and for different persons.

“In times when the overall perception of journalism can be quite negative in society and many journalists and news organizations face physical, psychological, economic and political attacks, they often rely on complex networks to protect their work and themselves,” says Ganter.

“Therefore, independency can be differently used, perceived and interpreted, depending on context and everyday life experience.”

While there is a tendency to research the negative sides of information sharing, such as disinformation and fake news, Ganter and her team hope that this project can help support high-quality journalism as a pillar of democracy by improving its visibility.

“Given the many challenges journalism faces, I find it increasingly necessary to do research that focuses explicitly on the value journalism can bring to society and to do that through dialogue with colleagues and stakeholders from different contexts,” says Ganter.

The Trans-Atlantic Partnership Grant will help Ganter and her team to set up the infrastructure necessary to conduct the research, employ researchers, establish a dialogue about the work and distribute its results. Without it, the international network of researchers would not have the resources necessary to conduct this work over an extended period.

One of the grant’s conditions is that the project brings project teams from at least three different countries together and one of them needs to be on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Through her international networks, Ganter found excellent Co-Principal Investigators and collaborators who supported the proposal and are based within the eleven eligible countries.

These researchers include professor Mel Bunce at City, University London and professor Musawenkosi Ndlowvu at Capetown University, who are the Co-PIs for UK and South Africa. In Brazil, the research is coordinated by professor Fernando Oliveira Paulino, from Universidade de Brasília.

In the near future, Ganter will be looking to hire emerging researchers to come to SFU to be part of the Trans-Atlantic Partnership team.