MediaFutures: Research Centre for Responsible Media Technology & Innovation
Researchers, media and technology companies in Media City Bergen will establish a centre for developing responsible media technology for the future. The University of Bergen (UiB) and partners from research and industry have now been granted status as Centre for Research-Based Innovation (SFI) .
Main content
The centre is named MediaFutures after the big future challenges for the media that the centre will seek to solve.
The partners
The centre is hosted and lead by the University of Bergen’s Department of Information Science and Media Studies.
Media partners include NRK and TV 2, the two main TV broadcasters in Norway, and media houses Schibsted and Amedia, including Bergens Tidende. The technology partners are Vizrt, Vimond, Wolftech, Highsoft, Fonn and IBM.
Research partners are the University of Oslo, the University of Stavanger and NORCE, VU Amsterdam, the Open University UK and the University of Oxford.
The priorities
The centre’s thematic priorities are in the field of media audience understanding, modelling and personalisation, media content production & analysis, media content interaction & accessibility, and language technology.
These thematic priorities are significantly important for further business development among the active industry partners.
E.g., for NRK and TV 2, it is important to have a precise understanding of their audience to further innovate on technological products. At the same time, they also need to innovate within responsible media user engagement, which is also a particularly important issue for our news media partners Schibsted and BT.
On the other hand, Vizrt, Vimond and Wolftech, all engaged in media production, require innovation in the context of novel production tools and analytics, as well as media content and accessibility approaches.
For all our partners it is, in addition, important to innovate on technological solutions related to Norwegian language models. It is therefore imperative to innovate on all thematic priority areas through research on cutting-edge media technology.
The challenges
Digital technology and new communication patterns in a networked society has challenged the role of editorial news media as the cornerstone of a free and democratic society.
Simultaneously, the current transformations of the public sphere highlight the importance of trustworthy news media facilitating an open and enlightened public discourse.
The centre will address current societal challenges including biases in AI, fakenews (and deep-fakes), echo chambers and political polarisation created through media technology.
The impact
The centre will deliver research outputs, eg in the form of patents, prototypes, papers and software.
It will perform significant research training (intersectoral and international) in media technology and innovation to ensure that the outputs of the centre will also sustain and impact the media landscape in the long run.
We aim to support the creation of start-up companies with an innovation-oriented mindset.
At a glance
Media City Bergen
Media City Bergen is an international knowledge and innovation cluster in which the Department of Information Science and Media Studies, University of Bergen, is co-located with leading media and media technology companies including TV 2, NRK, Vizrt, Bergens Tidende, IBM, BA, and ITV.
SFI - Centres for Research-based Innovation
The purpose of the Centres for Research-based Innovation (SFI) is to build up and strengthen Norwegian research groups that work in close collaboration with partners from innovative industry and public enterprises.
