Assistant Professor · RTA School of Media (The Creative School) · Toronto Metropolitan University
Read the information system,
not just the news.
Most media analysis tells you what was reported. The Frame explains what was decided—and why those decisions shape what citizens can know. Twelve years in production control rooms and teaching, now applied to the question that matters most: can democracy still read itself? My answer is a framework—democratic legibility—with aspects recognized by the 2026 CRTC–CCA Prize for Excellence in Policy Research.
AJ Cordeiro
I'm an Assistant Professor at the RTA School of Media (The Creative School), Toronto Metropolitan University, where I research the intersection of media production and democratic information. Originally from Tiohtià:ke/Montréal, I came to this work through John Abbott College's Media Arts program, then a BA in Political Science & Journalism Specialization at Concordia University, and twelve years as an instructor at Concordia.
Those twelve years were not just teaching. They were podcasting, data journalism, OSINT, documentary work, live election broadcasts, and sports content—the kind of production experience that is theorized in the media studies literature but almost never operationalized by someone who has actually made it.
My MA research at Concordia examined how pseudo-local news networks operate as political apparatus—applying sentiment analysis, topic modelling, and social media metrics to the Metric Media network's US operations from 2019 to 2024. The production expertise and the research methodology are the same argument.
My current work is organized around democratic legibility—a framework now extended into seven derivative constructs, one aspect of which earned the 2026 CRTC–CCA Prize for Excellence in Policy Research. I build it into research tools like LUCIA, an AI platform that reads the production of local governance, and I contribute to PATRON, an SSHRC-funded collaboration making municipal politics searchable for citizens. The Frame is where I work all of it out in public.
Awards & fellowships
From a national research prize to teaching and service awards—selected honours across journalism, research, and the academy.
CRTC–CCA Prize for Excellence in Policy Research
A national award from the Canadian Communication Association recognizing an outstanding contribution to communications policy research. Awarded by unanimous adjudication-panel decision for work introducing the democratic legibility framework and a computational analysis of the Metric Media pseudo-local news network.
RTDNA · Omar Sachedina · CTV News · Fellowship
One of two inaugural recipients of the RTDNA · Omar Sachedina · CTV News Fellowship, awarded through RTDNA Canada. AJ's fellowship work—a data-journalism investigation into how the 2025 Liberal leadership race was unfolding on social media—was published as a written feature and broadcast nationally on CTV National News.
Innovator's Award · SALTISE
The SALTISE (Supporting Active Learning & Technological Innovation in Studies of Education) Innovator's Award—a juried, sectoral honour recognizing exceptional innovation in teaching and learning across Quebec's higher-education network.
Concordia Council on Student Life Outstanding Contribution Award
Awarded by the Concordia Council on Student Life in recognition of exceptional service to students.
Faculty of Arts & Science Dean's Award for Excellence in Service to Faculty
Awarded by Concordia's Faculty of Arts and Science in recognition of exceptional service and contribution to the journalism faculty.
Academic work
Research grounded in production experience. Production experience clarified by research.
Democratic Legibility
An original analytical framework that inverts James Scott's concept of legibility: where Scott studied how states read their populations, this asks how citizens can read the state's information apparatus. It now extends into seven derivative constructs—opacity arbitrage, production capture, corrective lag, personalization capture, production-trail integrity, jurisdictional information mismatch, and civic legibility regeneration.
Digital Deceptions
Digital Deceptions: Unveiling the Impact of Pseudo-Local News on Democracy and Crafting Countermeasures (Concordia University, 2025). A Metric Media case study using sentiment analysis, topic modelling, and social media metrics to examine how pseudo-local news networks function as political apparatus. Supervised by Dr. James McLean.
Read the thesisLUCIA
Local Urban Civic Insight Auditor—an AI-enhanced civic-media research platform that indexes, aligns, and analyzes municipal livestreams, agendas, transcripts, and public records. LUCIA operationalizes democratic legibility: it reads the production of local governance so citizens and journalists can too. Developed in the Creative AI Sandbox at The Creative School, TMU.
PATRON
Local Politics Search Wizard—an SSHRC Partnership project (PI Dr. Nicole Blanchett) building an AI agent that makes municipal meetings, processes, and political decisions searchable and transparent to citizens. AJ is a collaborating researcher and co-supervises two graduate researchers on the project.
Visit the projectWhat is democratic legibility?
Democratic legibility is the capacity of citizens to read, interpret, and act on the information systems governing democratic life. The concept inverts James Scott's framework: where Scott analyzed how states render populations legible, democratic legibility asks how citizens can render the state's information apparatus—its production decisions, economic incentives, and institutional pressures—legible to themselves.
It is not media literacy, which focuses on individual decoding skills. It is not fact-checking, which addresses the output. Democratic legibility addresses the system that produces the output—and asks whether citizens have the structural capacity to read that system at all.
Say a “local news” site publishes a story about your city council. Media literacy asks whether the story is true. Democratic legibility asks the question underneath it: Who owns this site? Who pays for it? Why did it appear right before an election—and is it really journalism at all? Reading the story isn’t enough—you have to be able to read who made it, and why.
—AJ Cordeiro, The Frame
Selected publications
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Framework paper
Cordeiro, AJ. Democratic Legibility: Toward a Framework for Measuring Citizens' Capacity to Read Their Information Environment. Manuscript under review, 2026.
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CRTC–CCA Prize-recognized
Cordeiro, AJ. Micro-Targeted Pseudo-Local News: Computational Analysis of Metric Media's Digital Propaganda Network. Canadian Communication Association Annual Conference, 2026. CRTC–CCA citation
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Construct paper
Cordeiro, AJ. Opacity Arbitrage: The Strategic Exploitation of Information System Knowledge Asymmetry in Democratic Communication. Manuscript under review, 2026.
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Conference paper
Cordeiro, AJ. Making Civic Power Legible: Creative AI, Livestreamed Governance, and Public Understanding. 3rd Creative AI Symposium, Toronto Metropolitan University, 2026.
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Public-scholarship essay
Cordeiro, AJ. What the Control Room Knows. The Frame, 2026. doi:10.32920/32288628
Academic profiles
The Frame is where current research surfaces in public, while the story is happening—not months behind it.
Read the newsletterFind AJ online
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LinkedIn
LinkedIn
Professional network. Analysis and arguments in a professional register—shorter than the essays, same point of view.
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Institution
RTA School of Media · TMU
Faculty profile. One of North America's leading programs for media production, journalism, and communication research.
Read the TMU profile
Speaking & media inquiries
Available for talks, panels, expert commentary, and collaboration on media production, journalism, and democratic information. Tell me what you have in mind.
- Conference talks, panels & guest lectures
- Expert commentary for journalists & producers
- Research collaboration & consulting
The conversation is worth having.
The Frame is where I work that out—in public, in plain language.
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