Dr. Courtney C. Radsch is a nonresident fellow in the Center for Technology Innovation in Governance Studies at Brookings. She is also the director of the Center for Journalism and Liberty at the Open Markets Institute. In this role, Dr. Radsch produces and oversees cutting-edge research into news media market structures and helps design smart policy solutions to protect and bolster journalism’s financial and editorial independence. Her current research focuses on the platformatization of journalism; AI and information ecosystems; concentration of power and monopoly; and the evolving socioeconomic and technopolitical effects of media and technology.
Dr. Radsch works at the intersection of technology, media, and rights, drawing on her background as a journalist, scholar, and advocate. She writes and speaks about AI governance, technology policy, media sustainability, and the future of journalism. She is the author of Cyberactivism and Citizen Journalism in Egypt: Digital Dissidence and Political Change (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2016) and has published in top media outlets including The New York Times, Forbes, The Guardian, Newsweek, Al Jazeera, the Columbia Journalism Review, and Project Syndicate, among others, as well as peer-reviewed and law journals.
Radsch is a frequent public speaker and regularly provides expert commentary in the media, including the BBC, NPR, Al Jazeera, CNN, Bloomberg, and other global media outlets. She has led media assessment and advocacy missions to more than a dozen countries and has provided expert testimony to Congress and state legislatures, the Canadian Parliament, the EU, OSCE, OECD, and the United Nations. Her scholarship and work are informed by a commitment to human rights and a feminist perspective that centers questions of power. As a member of the responsible tech movement she serves on the boards of several organizations including Tech Policy Press, Ranking Digital Rights, and the Dangerous Speech Project. In addition to Brookings, Dr. Radsch is a non-resident fellow at UCLA’s Institute for Technology, Law & Policy, the Center for Democracy and Technology, and the Center for International Governance Innovation.
Dr. Radsch specializes in transforming research and ideas into action while building cross-functional organizational strategies and alliances to advance policy objectives and knowledge. She is a strategic advisor to leading human rights and media freedom organizations and previously led advocacy and communications at the Committee to Protect Journalists, freedom of expression work in the Arab region at UNESCO, and she worked as journalist in the U.S. and Middle East.
She holds a Ph.D. in international relations from American University, a M.S. from Georgetown University and a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley.