Program Manager, Business, Leadership, and Social Sector Ethics; Journalism & Media Ethics
408-551-3578
avarma2@scu.edu
Anita Varma is the program manager for Business, Leadership, and Social Sector Ethics as well as Journalism & Media Ethics. She works across partner relations, research, and public engagement for both program areas.
Prior to joining the Markkula Center, Varma was a doctoral candidate at Stanford University in the Department of Communication, where she focused on journalism ethics and received her PhD in 2018. Her dissertation (Solidarity in Action: A Case Study of Journalistic Humanizing Techniques in the San Francisco Homeless Project) analyzed the role of solidarity in American journalism using a case study of how and why Bay Area journalists humanize homeless people.
Before Stanford, Varma was an online advertising strategist at Google for three years. Varma received her BA in Media Studies with honors from Vassar College, where she was the editor-in-chief of the only student-run campus newspaper, and interned at The New Yorker magazine as well as the Women’s Institute for Freedom of the Press.
Articles by Anita Varma
Facebook’s Ethically Incoherent Response to Manipulated Content
Abdicating private responsibility is a strategic maneuver to avoid public accountability.
Regulating Disinformation? We’ve Been Debating the Wrong Question
Sanitizing digital content by fetishizing information will not remedy the root issue.
Ethical Implications of “Indexing” for Press Independence
Mueller report coverage in the context of press-state relations.
