Nicole Cohen

Programs: CCIT and PWC; Graduate Appointment at Faculty of Information
Specialization: Political economy of communication; Labour, work and organizing in media and cultural industries; digital journalism

Dr. Nicole S. Cohen is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Communication, Culture, Information, and Technology at the University of Toronto Mississauga and holds a graduate appointment in the Faculty of Information. She is the author of Writers’ Rights: Freelance Journalism in a Digital Age (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016), which won the Gertrude J. Robinson Book Prize from the Canadian Communication Association in 2017. She is the co-author, with Greig de Peuter, of New Media Unions: Organizing Digital Journalists (Routledge 2020). Nicole researches in the area of political economy of communication, particularly labour and organizing in the media and cultural industries, media work and journalism. Her research has been published in South Atlantic Quarterly, The Communication Review, Canadian Journal of Communication Studies, Democratic Communique, and several edited books in communication studies. Nicole collaborates on the international SSHRC-funded project, Cultural Workers Organize.

Research:
Dr. Nicole Cohen published several articles on work, labour organizing, and journalism, including “Bearing the Burden of Corporate Restructuring: Job Loss and Precarious Employment in Canadian Journalism,” with Andrea Hunter and Penny O’Donnell in Journalism Practice, “Interns Talk Back: Disrupting Media Narratives About Unpaid Work,” with Greig de Peuter in Political Economy of Communication,” and “Write, Post, Unionize: Journalists and Self-Organization,” with de Peuter in Notes From Below. de Peuter and Cohen are finishing a book about the movement to unionize digital journalists, which will be published by Routledge in 2020. Nicole, de Peuter, and Enda Brophy are writing a book for Pluto Press based on their Cultural Workers Organize research into how media and cultural workers are addressing precarious work and building sustainable models for cultural production. Nicole continues to work on her SSHRC-funded research on gender, race, and work in Canadian journalism.