Alfred Hermida is an online news pioneer, digital media scholar and journalism educator.

He is a co-author of Participatory Journalism: Guarding Open Gates at Online Newspapers, published in 2011 by Wiley-Blackwell.

The BBC veteran journalist is an associate professor at the Graduate School of Journalism of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, where he leads the integrated journalism program.

He was named an IBM CAS Canada Research Faculty Fellow in 2010 and in 2011, and is a finalist in the 2011 Digi Awards for Canada’s top social media maven.

He won a 2010 Canadian Online Publishing Award for best blog for Reportr.net, and a Commendation of Merit in the co-creation and collaboration media category of the SNCR Excellence in New Communications Awards program for UBC/CBC Radio 3 project, the Canadian Music Wiki.

Through his research at UBC, and his earlier work at the BBC, he has built an international reputation as an authority on new media, with his work appearing in Journalism Practice, New Media and Society and M/C Journal. His research interests include participatory journalism, social media and emerging genres of digital journalism.