Hello! I’m Endalkachew H. Chala, a media and communication scholar whose work examines how digital platforms, media institutions, and public and nonprofit organizations shape public knowledge, access, trust, and communicative power across multilingual, intercultural, and transnational settings.

My research brings together platform governance, journalism, political communication, migration and intercultural communication, and institutional communication. I study questions such as AI-assisted content moderation, Trust & Safety, internet shutdowns and digital sovereignty, journalist safety, diaspora and transnational media, immigrant information environments, and communication between institutions and culturally and linguistically diverse communities.

I use quantitative, qualitative, computational, and mixed-method approaches, including statistical analysis, computational text analysis, classifier audits, web scraping, interviews, ethnography, archival research, discourse analysis, and digital trace data. I am currently a Fellow at the Center for an Informed Public at the University of Washington, where I am extending this work into questions of information quality, trust, and public communication.

Teaching is also central to my work. I have taught communication and media courses at Arba Minch University, the University of Oregon, Hamline University, and colleges in the Twin Cities, and I also teach digital and information literacy in community settings. This includes work with immigrant and refugee communities through the International Institute of Minnesota, connecting communication scholarship with practical questions of access, participation, and everyday digital life.

Beyond academic research, I have a long record of journalism and public writing, including work with Global Voices and contributions to The Guardian. I also build and curate public-facing scholarly resources, including a Journal Navigator, a Field Opportunities page, and an African Media & Communication Research Library for researchers working across communication and media studies.

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Research · Publications · Teaching · Journalism & Public Writing
Resource Library · Journal Navigator · Field Opportunities · GitHub

I also write at endalk.blog, where I share commentary and reflections on media, technology, democracy, research, and public life.