Young Infomedia talents get nearly 1 million for new research
PhD candidate Mehri Agai has been awarded a grant from Medietilsynet for her project on young people and their digital lives, ands two students have been awarded master thesis support.
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Mehri Agai is behind one of only 8 research projects that have received support from The Norwegian Media Authority (Medietilsynet) for research on media and video games in 2024. Agai has a background in psychology and is writing her doctoral thesis at the Department of Information and Media Science on youth and disconnection. In addition to participating in the large Research Council-funded project Digitox, she has been an active disseminator of research on youth, digitization, and socio-economic inequality for some time.
“I am happy, excited, and relieved,” says Agai after the award of nearly one million kroner was announced.
The project “Youth’s Digital Balancing Act” deals with young people’s screen use and how social differences shape the way young people regulate screen time and digital media in their everyday lives. The project will uncover how today’s youth navigate and balance in the digital landscape and how they perceive and allocate responsibility for their digital habits. Dissemination of the results, locally to high schools and regionally to the municipality’s education department, is an essential part of the goal of increasing young people’s critical media understanding.
As part of this year’s allocation, two of the department’s master’s students have also received support. This is also a valuable addition to both the department and the student body.
“At Infomedia, having doctoral candidates and students receive research funding is another confirmation that the department is a research environment for leading young researchers and research talents,” says department head Marija Slavkovik. She elaborates, “We are happy and grateful that Agai has been given this opportunity to develop her research competence and project management experience with us.”
The Media Authority is the state’s supervisory and administrative body in the media field, and as part of its activities, it annually announces funds for media research. In 2024, the focus was on media diversity and critical media understanding.