Ahmed Al

I am an Associate Professor of News, Social Media, and Public Communication at the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University. I am also the Director of The Disinformation Project whose findings and insights were featured in 100+ news stories including reports by the BBC, Vice, CNN, NPR, the New York Times, the Guardian, AFP, CBC, the Globe and Mail,….etc.

I began my full-time media career in 2002 by serving as a Communication Officer and later a Spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Iraq. My media interviews on the evolving humanitarian situation in Iraq were published in 100+ news reports including The Washington Post, The Independent, Al-Jazeera, BBC News, BBC Arabic, The Associated Press, AFP, UPI…etc.

Between 2002 and 2006, I wrote several investigative reports for the ICRC about the victims of war in Iraq in both Arabic and English languages. I also worked as a freelance radio journalist for a couple of US-based radio stations, and one of my 2003 radio reports for Pacifica Network Radio on prisoners' abuse was nominated for a US national award in 2004. In mid 2005, I served for about a week as a news editor for CNN - Arabic in Dubai, the UAE where I produced a few news reports on human rights violations in Iraq. 

In 2006, I started my full-time academic career by teaching in the Sultanate of Oman. Soon after that, I began studying for my second Ph.D. study in media and communication research at Leicester University in the UK. Overall, I taught at several colleges and universities in 5 countries including serving as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Media & Communication at Erasmus University in the Netherlands (2011-2014) during which I won a few teaching awards. I served later as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Communication Studies at Concordia University in Canada (2015-2018). 

In terms of peer reviewed publications, I have published 5 academic books, 2 (co)-edited books, 25+ book chapters, and over 90 research papers. I also delivered presentations, lectures, and talks in over 100 events natioanlly and internationally, and I advised and offered expert consultancy and feedback to numerous NGOs, humanitarian and civic groups, the UN, non-profit organizations, and governmental bodies such as the Public Order Emergency Commission and the Canadian Parliament. 

In terms of academic service, I have blind reviewed over 165 research papers submitted to more than 80 academic journals. Currently, I serve in the editorial board of more than half a dozen academic journals including Digital Journalism, Journal of Popular Culture (since 2009), Communication Studies, Arab Media & Society, and Al-Bahith Al A’alami. 

At SFU, I received research funding for 15 projects, and I worked with more than 35 research assistants to collaboratively produce research papers, reports, and a few books. The funds that I have brought to the School of Communication as a principal and co-applicant are over $700K, and the funders include SSHRC, CIHR, the Department of Heritage's Digital Citizen Contribution Program, Mitacs, British Columbia’s Office of the Human Rights Commissioner, and various SFU's internal grants.

My current research focuses on exploring various digital and traditional research methods to identify bad actors and analyze their content as well as understand the intersections between news and social media. My 2022-2025 Insight grant project, for example, investigates the issues of racism and democracy from the perspective of racialized Canadian journalists, the online public, and news content, partly to understand whether racism negatively influences democracy. We attempt to use empirical Critical Race Theory (eCRT) to understand these issues.