Even though the MediaRoad project has finished we would like to stay in touch with all interested stakeholders. We therefore issued a newsletter in July 2020, addressing a number of different activities which contribute to finding answers and solutions to the big societal, technical, economic and policy challenges of the constantly evolving digital media environment.
In case you did not receive the newsletter in your mailbox, you can download a PDF-version here.
Written by: Bianca Manelli, Chantal Cocherová, Georgios Evgenidis, Jiahuan He, Lara Corrado, Suhasni Midha, Yuliia Hladka, Zeynep Atilgan Ozgenc, Luciano Morganti & Heritiana Ranaivoson
What is news? What makes somebody a journalist? In the era of social media and blogs, the answers to these questions are not as clear as they were 10 years ago. With professional journalism still struggling to work through the digitalization of media, the rise of citizen journalism challenges the definition of both news and journalist.
With a few tools at disposal, a smartphone and a taste for news, an internet connection, a Twitter account and a good bunch of followers, if somebody tweets from a social movement, a demonstration or a fire, they can make an online trend. But, does any reported information qualify as news? Does this tweeting activity make them journalists?
According to the American Press Institute, journalism is the activity of gathering, assessing, creating, and presenting news and information. Following this general definition, anyone with a smartphone and social media account could technically do journalistic activities.
Is this definition sufficient to capture journalism? In the digital era, journalism needs to be redefined in order to account for how news and journalist as a profession have evolved in the last years.
MediaRoad assigned the Quality Label to France Télévisions’ Sandbox “Compositeur Digital” Project, created by the Excense start-up, started in September 2018. See https://www.mediaroad.eu/prize-development-and-quality-label for information about the MediaRoad’s Quality Label.
In September 2018, France Télévisions introduced a new concept for live presentations of news on its channels. Journalists are now able to manipulate on a large touch screen their presentation contents such as pictures, videos or even 3D models while delivering their explanations and being filmed in close up. With natural gestures, the presenter can move, zoom in or hide content to improve clarity for viewers.
This approach emphasizes the journalist’s expertise and creates a powerful engagement with our audience. The solution is now used on a daily basis on France Info TV but also on the evening news on France 2 (main channel).
The Compositeur Digital software is developed by Excense, an awarded startup with activities with industry leaders of the French Stock Market and US companies.
Their product has been rapidly adopted by our community of journalists for its ease of use and visual impact, helping us create a new standard in broadcast journalism in France.
More info
Start-up website: http://www.excense.fr/en/index.html
Email: contact[AT]excense.fr
Project description on MediaRoad site
Sandbox: France Télévisions Lab
“Open Europe, open programme, new type of funding for innovation“: this is how Carlos Moedas, Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation described the recently published 2018-2020 work programme for Horizon 2020 and the EU’s plans for the future of innovation funding.
WHAT’S NEW FOR THE MEDIA SECTOR?
Over the next three years, roughly 2.7 billion € [1] will be invested in information and communication technologies (ICT). While the media sector is included within this category, access to H2020 funding for media organisation is still limited compared to other industries.
There are nevertheless some positive developments, notably the inclusion of media as one of the vertical industries in the 5G PPP on “Advanced 5G Network Infrastructure”, which will be geared towards setting up fixed, mobile and satellite networks, together with computing and storage resources, into a unified, programmable and universally available infrastructure.
