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, now applied to the question that matters most: can democracy still read itself?
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 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—the capacity of citizens to read, interpret, and act on the information systems governing democratic life. The Frame is where I work that out in public.
Awards & fellowships
Selected honours for journalism, research, and service to the field.
RTDNA · Omar Sachedina · CTV News · Fellowship
One of two inaugural recipients of the $10,000 RTDNA · Omar Sachedina · CTV News Fellowship, awarded through RTDNA Canada. The fellowship supports original journalism produced for consideration on CTV News platforms. AJ's work focused on data journalism and social media's role in Canadian federal politics.
SALTISE Innovation Teaching Award
Awarded by SALTISE in recognition of exceptional innovation to teaching and learning. Received in the year of AJ's transition from Concordia University to the RTA School of Media (The Creative School), TMU.
Concordia Council on Student Life's Outstanding Contribution Award'
Awarded by CCSL in recognition of exceptional service to students.
Faculty of Arts & Sciences Dean's Award for Excellence in Service to Faculty
Awarded by Faculty of Arts & Sciecnes in recognition of exceptional service and contribution to journalism faculty.
Journalism across national platforms
Original reporting and documentary work produced for CBC & CTV National News. Areas include data journalism, OSINT, federal politics, and social media's role in the information environment.
Academic work
Research grounded in production experience. Production experience clarified by research.
Democratic Legibility
An original analytical framework: the capacity of citizens to read, interpret, and act on the information systems governing democratic life. Inverts James Scott's concept of legibility—where Scott analyzed how states read populations, this framework asks how citizens can read the state's information apparatus. Not media literacy. Not fact-checking. The structural capacity underneath both.
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 thesisRTA School of Media (The Creative School)· TMU
The RTA School of Media (The Creative School) at Toronto Metropolitan University is one of North America's leading programs for media production and communication research. Faculty research sits at the intersection of production practice and communication theory.
Read the TMU profileWhat 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.
— AJ Cordeiro, The Frame
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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Institution
RTA School of Media · TMU
Faculty profile. One of North America's leading programs for media production, journalism, and communication research.
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ORCID
ORCID iD
Researcher identifier linking academic publications and affiliations. iD: 0009-0007-2636-5613.
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Google Scholar
Google Scholar
Academic publication index and citation record.
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The conversation is worth having.
The information systems democracy depends on are changing faster than the vocabulary for understanding them. The Frame is where I work that out in public—every two weeks, in plain language, with a point of view I'm willing to defend and willing to correct.
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