MediaFutures

Annual Meeting 2024
2024-11-14 09:45 - 2024-11-15 15:15 (Europe/Oslo) | Scandic Ørnen, Bergen
MediaFutures is a centre for research-based innovation with the goal to develop responsible media technology, leveraging AI technology, for the media sector.
The centre is a consortium of the most important media players in Norway. The University of Bergen is the host of the centre. User partners include NRK and TV 2, the two main TV broadcasters in Norway, Schibsted, including Bergens Tidende (BT), and Amedia, the two largest news media houses in Scandinavia/Norway, as well as the world-renowned Norwegian media tech companies Vizrt and Faktisk.no. The centre collaborates with renowned national research institutions including the University of Oslo, the University of Stavanger and NORCE, and works together with high-profile international research institutions.
This years Media Futures Annual Meeting will be held at November 14-15 at Scandic Ørnen, Bergen in Norway. The 2024 Annual Meeting constitutes a forum for the exchange of scientific results and industry insights within the field of responsible media technology.
This year’s focus topic are Trust and Usability of Generative AI .
Following last year’s success, the 2024 Annual Meeting is expected once again to attract, and bring together Norwegian and international researchers, and industry practitioners with the intent of engaging in discussions on different topics.
Join us for inspirational keynote talks, prototype demonstrations, presentations held by our researchers, and industry partners, and poster session.

REGISTRATION CLOSED

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Vanessa Murdock
Sr Manager Applied Science - Amazon Web Services

Keynote Speech
Title: Responsible AI in the Generative Era
Abstract: Responsible AI (RAI) seeks basic guarantees of fairness, safety, privacy, robustness, controllability, explainability, transparency, and governance for traditional ML systems and generative AI systems. With recent legislation, including the EU AI Act, RAI has become a central focus of the AI/ML product development cycle. This talk provides an overview of the current practices for measuring and mitigating RAI dimensions in generative systems, and recent research in AWS AI/ML.

Bio
Vanessa Murdock leads a research group in AWS AI/ML, whose focus is Responsible AI (fairness, safety, privacy, robustness, and veracity). In addition to doing fundamental research in RAI topics, her team builds tools for assessing aspects of responsible AI, used in AWS Services such as Bedrock, Rekognition and Transcribe. Prior to joining AWS, she led a science team in Alexa Shopping focused on recommender systems, search and HCI. Her team provided the machine learning that backed Amazon’s Choice, and Alexa Shopping List, in addition to contributing content moderation for the generative AI system Rufus. She was previously at Microsoft, working on location inference and notifications at Bing and Cortana. Prior to Microsoft, Murdock led the Geographic Context and Experience Group at Yahoo! Research in Barcelona, which centered on geographic information retrieval and user-generated content. She has been awarded 20 patents, resulting in a Master Inventor Award from Yahoo! (2012). She received the OAA Award for Outstanding Achievement by a Young Alum from the University of Massachusetts in 2014. She is currently serving as the Chair of the ACM SIGIR Executive Committee. Murdock received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Massachusetts Amherst Center for Intelligent Information Retrieval, advised by Bruce Croft.

Alejandro (Alex) Jaimes
Chief Scientist and Senior Vice President of AI - Dataminr

Keynote Speech
Title: Responsible AI in Critical Real-Time Applications
Abstract: Dataminr’s AI Platform discovers the earliest signals of events, risks, and threats from billions of multi-modal inputs from over one million public data sources. It uses Predictive AI for detecting events, Generative AI for describing them, and ReGenerative AI for generating live briefs that continuously update as events unfold. The events discovered by the platform help first responders quickly respond to emergencies, they help corporate security teams respond to risks (including Cyber risks), and they help news organizations discover breaking events so they can provide fast and accurate coverage. Building and deploying a large-scale AI platform like Dataminr’s is fraught with research and technical challenges. This includes tackling the hardest problem in AI (determining the real-time value of information), which requires combining a multitude of AI approaches. In this talk, I will briefly describe the main use cases of the work which I do, but I will focus specifically on Responsible AI: in the domains we work, the alerts we send out save lives, which implies the need for many levels of decision-making that can be impacted by AI. I will describe a framework on the deployment of responsible AI that is based on the types of decisions in which AI is involved, and the types of factors that need to be considered in deploying AI in critical applications.

Bio
Alex Jaimes is the Chief Scientist and Senior Vice President of AI at Dataminr. His work centers on blending qualitative and quantitative approaches to understand user behavior and drive product innovation.
With over 15 years of global experience, Alex has contributed to research with real-world impact at companies such as Yahoo, KAIST, Telefónica, IDIAP-EPFL, Fuji Xerox, IBM, Siemens, and AT&T Bell Labs. Previously, he served as Head of R&D at DigitalOcean, CTO at AiCure, and Director of Research and Video Products at Yahoo, where he led teams of scientists and engineers across New York City, Sunnyvale, Bangalore, and Barcelona.
He has also been a visiting professor at KAIST. A prolific author, Alex has published extensively in top conferences like KDD, WWW, RecSys, CVPR, and ACM Multimedia, and is a regular speaker at international academic and industry events. He earned his Ph.D. from Columbia University.

PROGRAM

Day 1

OPENING SESSION

09:45
Registration & Coffee & Event Information

10:15
Poster & Demo Exhibition Vol. 1

12:00
Lunch

KEYNOTES SESSION

13:00
Welcome Address: Siri Gloppen (UiB), Christian Birkeland (TV2), Christoph Trattner (MediaFutures)

13:15
First Keynote Speech: Vanessa Murdock (Amazon Web Services): "Responsible AI in the Generative Era"

13:45
Moderated QA with Alain D. Starke (University of Amsterdam)

14:00
Coffee Break

14:15
Second Keynote Speech: Alex Jaimes (Dataminr): "Responsible AI in Critical Real-Time Applications"

14:45
Moderated QA with Mehdi Elahi (MediaFutures)

15:00
Coffee break & Group Picture

TACKLING MIS- & DISINFORMATION SESSION

15:15
Presentation: Project Reynir Results: Christoph Trattner & Helge O. Svela

15:45
Panel: Kayleen Devlin, (BBC Verify), Helge O. Svela (Media Cluster Norway), Vinay J. Setty (Factiverse, UiS), Sergej Stoppel (Wolftech), Morten Langfeldt Dahlback (Faktisk.no), Moderation: Bjørnar Tessem (MediaFutures)

FINAL SESSION

16:30
Interactive Poster & Demo Pitches Vol. 2

18:00
Poster & Demo Award

19:30
Conference Dinner (Scandic Ørnen)

Day 2

OPENING SESSION

09:45
Registration & Coffee & Event Information

INSIGHTS & INNOVATION SESSION

10:15
Book Teaser: John Magnus R. Dahl (MediaFutures): "Making a World with the Smartphone", Moderation: Peder Haugfos

10:45
Coffee Break

11:00
Presentation by Sanja Šćepanović (Nokia Bell Labs, Cambridge): "Responsible AI: Innovating from Design to Deployment", Moderation: Morten Fjeld (MediaFutures)

12:00
Lunch

AI & NEWS SESSION

13:00
Presentation by Kayleen Devlin (BBC Verify): "BBC Verify: tackling falsehoods in an age of uncertainty", Moderation: Christopher Senf (MediaFutures)

13:45
Coffee Break

14:00
Presentation by Lubos Steskal & Chris Ronald Hermansen (TV2): "Real Journalist, Virtual Avatar: What We Learned from Peeking into Pandora's Box with KI-Kjetil", Moderation: Samia Touileb (MediaFutures)

14:30
Presentation by Damian Trilling (University of Amsterdam): "Responsible Recommender Systems for News" Moderator: Erik Knudsen (MediaFutures)

15:15
End.

The program is tentative and subject to change.

SPEAKERS

Kayleen Devlin
Senior Journalist at BBC Verify

Bio
Kayleen Devlin is a senior journalist at BBC Verify. She has extensive experience of working on open-source investigations and covering disinformation from the Ukraine and Israel Gaza wars. As well as this, she has also covered topics ranging from climate denial around COP26 and election related disinformation in the Philippines and the US midterm and presidential elections.

BBC Verify: tackling falsehoods in an age of uncertainty
In a year filled with global conflicts and elections, communicating credible information in a timely manner has never felt more important. BBC Verify senior journalist, Kayleen Devlin, joins us to discuss some of the approaches her team takes when it comes to tackling misleading posts online. What are some of the main themes that have cropped up this year? And how much has generative AI disrupted the landscape?

Sanja Šćepanović
Senior Research Scientist, Nokia Bell Labs

Bio
Sanja is an applied mathematician with MSc in cybersecurity and cryptography and a PhD in data science. Almuna of Internation Space University and ex of ICEYE, she has a keen interest in space technology and research (e.g., AI for Earth Observation).
Her professional experiences include government institutions, two startups, CERN, and Bell Labs. During her doctoral studies with EIT Digital, she has also taken business, innovation and entrepreneurship courses, working on startup ideas in some of them.
Her example research projects include public and population health studies using social networks, human dynamics using mobile phone data, and urban vitality using satellite data.

Responsible AI: Innovating from Design to Deployment
Abstract: This talk presents the work of the Responsible AI (RAI) team at Nokia Bell Labs, Cambridge. It covers the six RAI pillars and solutions for designing, deploying, and monitoring responsible AI systems. Discover AI Design, a collaborative approach for holistic AI system design, and ExploreGen, which helps foresee and manage potential uses and risks of AI technology. See how NLPGuard prevents over-reliance on protected attributes when monitoring a toxicity classifier. Finally, gain insights into how AI incidents are portrayed in the news media.

Damian Trilling
Professor at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Bio
Damian Trilling is a full professor at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and holds the Chair for Journalism Studies.
Damian Trilling, with a background in social sciences and a role in a humanities department, integrates multiple perspectives, especially in computational methods. His research focuses on how citizens engage with news and current affairs amid today’s media landscape, examining the roles of journalists, news media, social platforms, and technology.
Initially using surveys, Trilling now leverages digital trace data, such as browser history donations, to study news consumption and sharing across formats, including high- and low-quality news and misinformation. He has also contributed insights on shareworthy news and large-scale sharing on platforms like Facebook.
Trilling investigates feedback loops in media—how popular content reinforces itself, the effects of personalization, and audience metrics on news production. He also critiques the “filter bubble” concept, preferring a nuanced view on personalized news flows.
A proponent of computational communication, Trilling co-founded *Computational Communication Research*, and co-authored a book on computational analysis. His interests include machine learning, event identification across media, and experimental tools for recommender systems and data donation.

Responsible recommender systems for news
News organizations increasingly use recommender systems on their websites, and also for streaming platforms that offer content regarding news and current affairs, recommender systems are essential. From a user perspective, such systems can help surfacing relevant content; and from a commercial perspective, they can lead to higher click-through rates and revenues. At the same time, there are growing concerns that too much emphasis on clicks may be detrimental to delivering a responsible journalistic product. In this talk, I show recent developments that allow to leverage recommendation techniques to achieve desirable outcomes such as broadening users’ horizon without sacrificing user satisfaction.

Siri Gloppen
Dean of SV-faculty at UiB

Bio
Siri Gloppen is a Professor of Political Science and Vice Dean at the Faculty of Social Sciences. She directs LawTransform, the CMI-UiB Centre on Law & Social Transformation, and heads the Bergen School of Global Studies. Her work focuses on the intersections of law, politics, and social change, and she is actively involved in global development and policy research initiatives.

Christian Birkeland
Chief Digital Officer at TV2

Bio
Birkeland holds a Master of Science in Engineering from NTNU in Trondheim and has a background as CEO of RiksTV.
Christian Birkeland is part of the executive management team at TV 2 and the chairman of the steering board in SFI MediaFutures.

Christoph Trattner
Director, SFI MediaFutures

Bio
Christoph Trattner is currently appointed as Lead Professor (1404) by the University Board of the University of Bergen (UiB). At UiB, he serves as the Founder and Center Director of the Research Centre for Responsible Media Technology & Innovation, known as SFI MediaFutures, which has secured funding and in-kind contributions totaling approximately 300 million NOK.
Additionally, he is the Founder and Leader of the DARS research group, Norway’s largest research group specializing in Recommender Systems. He holds a PhD (with distinction), MSc (with distinction), and BSc in Computer Science and Telematics from Graz University of Technology in Austria and is an ACM Senior Member.

Helge O. Svela
CEO at Media Cluster Norway

Bio
Svela is an award winning investigative journalist and editor. As a journalist in Bergens Tidende, Svela won a Skup-diploma for the fact checking initiative faktasjekk.no. Svela held various leadership positions over 11 years in Bergens Tidende, og was in charge of the newspaper’s coverage of the 2011 terrorist attack. Svela has also led various innovation initiatives in Bergen Tidende, among them New digital formats, which won a silver medal in the 2022 INMA Awards for innovation in newsroom. He started as the CEO of Media Cluster Norway in September 2022. Media Cluster Norway is a media and media tech cluster with around 90 member companies. Svela chairs the ITPC working group on Provenance Best Practices and Implementation.

Chris Ronald Hermansen
Project Manager for editorial AI at TV 2

Bio
Chris Ronald Hermansen is the project manager for editorial AI at TV 2. Over the past 15 years, he has worked as a journalist, news editor, and project manager in various media companies. In recent years, he served as the editorial manager for TV 2’s news department in Bergen. Hermansen holds a law degree.
Lubos Steskal is a data scientist and AI developer at TV 2’s editorial AI team, and he is also the industry lead of the Media Futures language technology work package. Combining academic and industry experience, he has worked extensively with natural language processing and machine learning across various sectors. His background includes positions at the University of Bergen, Sbanken, and several startups, bringing a unique perspective to the intersection of AI, journalism and media.

Real Journalist, Virtual Avatar: What We Learned from Peeking into Pandora's Box with KI-Kjetil
‘KI-Kjetil’, the first AI avatar of a news personality in Norwegian media, serves as an interactive chatbot focusing on U.S. presidential election coverage. Based on journalist and news anchor Kjetil H. Dale, this talk presents the journey of developing and deploying KI-Kjetil, from evaluating editorial questions and challenges through technical implementation and towards operational monitoring. We explore the editorial rationale behind creating an AI clone of a news anchor, discuss our project objectives, and evaluate their outcomes. The presentation opens a discussion about the broader implications of AI avatars in journalism, examining their impact on public trust and the ethical dimensions of deploying AI-powered representations of real journalists.

John Magnus R. Dahl
Postdoctoral Researcher in SFI MediaFutures

Bio
John Magnus R. Dahl is Postdoc in WP1 Understanding Media Experiences at MediaFutures. He holds a MA in Rhetoric, Argumentation and Philosophy from the University of Amsterdam and a PhD from the Department of Information Science and Media Studies at the University of Bergen. Dahl is interested in the relationship between culture, communication, and politics in a broad sense, as well is the development of ethnographic methods within media studies and rhetoric. He is currently working on a project of how Norwegian public broadcasters relate to, or do not manage to relate to, the media experiences and social and cultural needs of young people.

Making a world with the smartphone
In this talk, postdoc John Magnus R. Dahl presents insights from his forthcoming book, the first book from MediaFutures – In The Palm of Their Hands: Teenage Boys and their Smartphones as Worldmaking Devices (expected spring 2025).
Based on an ethnographic fieldwork where Dahl observed six teen boys online and offline over 18 months, this books seeks to answer how the smartphone impacts the life of young people. The central argument is that the smartphone gives teenagers agency – agency to find out who they want to be, to connect with the people and communities that matter to them and to the wider world. This is why the smartphone is conceptualised as a worldmaking device.
In addition, Dahl has found that the smartphone use is fundamentally gendered – used to enact masculinities, different ways of being a man – and that it is used differently by those who are “different” – ethnic minorities and queer people. For them, worldmaking through the smartphone is even more important.

Sergej Stoppel
Chief Innovation Officer at Wolftech

Bio
Sergej is the Chief Innovation Officer at Wolftech, where he leads a culture of innovation across interdisciplinary teams, transforming industry standards for a platform serving over 20,000 global professionals. With a PhD in Computer Science and recipient of the Eurovis Best Dissertation Award, Sergej combines research-driven strategic planning with a passion for customer-centric solutions. He is a recognized AI expert and thought leader, regularly speaking at key industry events and driving sustainable growth through strategic partnerships and groundbreaking AI solutions for media professionals.

Morten Langfeldt Dahlback
Head of Innovation and Technology at Faktisk.no

Bio
Morten Langfeldt Dahlback leads the technology and development efforts at Faktisk.no. He also heads the EU project NORDIS, a Nordic collaboration aimed at countering misinformation and disinformation. Dahlback holds a PhD in philosophy and has previously worked as a commentator for Adresseavisen and as an analyst for The Economist Intelligence Unit.

Vinay Setty
Associate Professor at Universitet i Stavanger

Bio
Vinay Setty is the founder and CTO of Factiverse and an associate professor at University of Stavanger. Setty’s research area broadly encompasses NLP, information retrieval and deep neural networks for language technologies. He specializes in fact-checking, question answering, and conversational search. He has published in several top-tier conferences within the area of information retrieval and web mining such as SIGIR, The Web Conf, WSDM, CIKM etc.
Furthermore, he also won the 2020 SR Bank Innovation prize in Norway for commercializing neural network technology for fake news detection. Setty’s startup Factiverse has also won digital trust challenge and NORA AI startup award and has secured a US Patent on deep neural networks for false claim detection. Setty has a PhD in Computer Science from University of Oslo and a postdoc from Max-Planck Institute for Informatics in Germany.

EXHIBITION AND DEMO PITCHES

Demos

Name
Title

Khadiga Seddik
Beyond Political Personalization: Enhancing News Recommendation with Headline Style Customization Using ChatGPT

Bilal Mahmood
Large Language Models as Editors Picking Related News Articles

Snorre Alvsvåg
Sequential Recommender systems in action in the Video Domain: A TV 2 Demonstration

Fazle Rabbi & Svenja Forstner
Ai Conflict Analysis Tool

Pete Andrews
AI Co-Moderator: Enhancing Broadcasted Political Debates

Huiling You & Svenja Forstner
Event Extractor Model

Poster

Name
Title

Jeng Jia-Hua
Negativity Sells? Using an LLM to Affectively Reframe News Articles in a Recommender System

Sindre Berg Sæter
Metadata Analysis of Images and Videos

Adane N. Tarekegn
CSAI: New Cluster Validation Index based on Stability Analysis

Beatrix Chik Wu
News Report Adaptation for Synthetic Voice Presentation

Sohail Khan
CLIPing the deception: Adapting Vision-Language Models for Universal Deepfake Detection

Jørgen Eknes-Riple
Emotional Reframing Recommended News Articles

Bjørn Kjartansson Mørch
Analysis of Popularity Bias Effect in Media Recommendation

Tord Berget Monclair
Personalised News Recommendation in the Sports Domain

Snorre Åldstedt
Investigating and Measuring Bias in Generative Language Models

Peter Røysland Aarnes
NumPert: When Numbers Shift, does Prediction Hold?

Martin Salterød Sjåvik
Subtler biases in LLMs

Marianne Borchgrevink-Brækhus
News experience: understanding the resonance between content, practices & situatedness in everyday life

Tobias Jovall Wessel
Empowering Real-Time Media Research With NewsCatcher API

Bilal Mahmood
Can Large Language Models Support Editors Pick Related News Articles?

Ayoub El Majjodi
Advancing Visual Food Attractiveness Predictions for Healthy Food Recommender Systems

Thorstein Lium Fougner
Enhancing Enterprise streaming platforms with contextual post-filtering

Gloria Anne Babile Kasangu
Picture this: How Image Filters affect trust in online news

Ingunn Statle Nævdal
Personalised news summarisation

LOCATION

Both days of the Annual Meeting will take place at the Conference Centre at Scandic Ørnen.
Scandic Ørnen is located in Lars Hilles Gate 18, right next to the main bus terminal.The closest public transport stop is “Bergen Busstasjon”, the main bus terminal.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/oHBxMur84ReqdFVx7

NIKT 2024
2024-11-25 09:00 - 2024-11-27 16:00 | Nygårdsgaten 5, Nordre Allmenning 3 at Læringsarenaen
University of Bergen will arrange Norwegian Conference for ICT Research and Education (NIKT) from 25.-27. November 2024 in Bergen. NIKT is an important national meeting place for researchers, teachers, masters and PhD students in information and communication technology, computer science, information science and information systems. A conference for ICT-researchers in Norway bringing together people from the following fields:

NIK – Norwegian Informatics Conference

NOKOBIT – Norwegian Conference for Organizations’ Use of IT

NISK – Norwegian Information Security Conference

UDIT – Norwegian Conference for Education and Didactics in IT subjects

The conference is hosted by Department of Information Science and Media Studies at Faculty of Social Science, University of Bergen and funded by SFI MediaFutures and SLATE.
The academic content of the conference will consist of a number of peer reviewed articles that present new research, supplemented by the contributions of four invited speakers on current topics in ICT research, innovation and education. In addition, held in conjunction with the conference, there will be a meeting of the national ICT fagråd as well as a number of thematic workshops and lightning-talk poster presentations.
One of the three keynote speakers will be Björn Þór Jónsson, Associate Professor, CRESS, at the Department of Computer Science in Reykjavik University.
Björn Þór is working within the broad field of Multimedia Analytics, applying Multi-Dimensional Analysis concepts and techniques to multimedia. A strong focus is on interactive learning at scale, resulting in the Exquisitor prototype, which can interact with a collection of 100M images in real-time on a standard laptop. Over the last decade, his research has focused primarily on the performance of very large scale content based multimedia retrieval. This research has led to the traditional international publications and graduate degrees, but also to two patent applications and a start-up company, Videntifier Technologies. He has taught classes on the database design and implementation, the architecture and performance of database systems, the architecture and performance of SSDs, big data management, and on advanced database systems, such as multimedia systems, stream query processing and database client caching.
The second keynote speaker is Per Thorsheim.
With close to 30 years of experience in information security, he is a passionate and knowledgeable leader in this area. His core competencies include operational security management, policy development and implementation, hardening and security patch management, defence in depth, risk analysis, awareness training, and incident handling. He also has a strong interest and expertise in passwords and password research, having founded and organized the first and only conference dedicated to passwords and digital authentication: #PasswordsCon. Per is a frequent speaker, writer & media commentator on security-related topics, and is currently holding the CISA and CRISC credentials from ISACA.

There will be 2 more keynote speakers in the conference.

Important deadlines:
1 September: Abstract submission
8 September: Full paper submission
11 October: Notification of acceptance
25 October: Camera ready paper
1 November: Registration

Workshop: From Research to Academic Startup
2024-12-05 10:00 - 12:45 | SFI MediaFutures, MCB
Curious about how to bring your research to life outside academia? This workshop provides a chance to explore just that. Through inspiring talks of start-up founders, hands-on activities, and networking, you’ll get a taste of what it takes to turn research into a startup venture.
Highlights include:
– An introduction to VIS’ brand-new entrepreneurship program for researchers, TILT, tailored to provide researchers and graduate students with entrepreneurial skills, expert advisory services and access to capital and networks. Recruitment of pilot participants in progress!
– Inspirational stories from innovators who’ve made the transition to startup founders
– Case work to start building an entrepreneurial mindset
Program Outline

10:00 – 10:15: Coffee and mingling
10:15 – 11:00: Introducing VIS & TILT & ADA incubator
11:00 – 11:50: Small Group Activity – Designing a Start-Up Plan
12:00 – 12:45: Inspirational Talks:

Luqman Wadood, Founder and CEO of UngDebatt (Bergen)
Jonathan Geffen, Co-Founder and CTO of the gaming start-up Cross Hatch (Berlin)
Håvard Tveit, Co-founder and CEO Everviz (Bergen)
Gaute Kokkvoll, Head of Product at Factiverse (Bergen)

Sign up and mark your calendar for December 5th and join us to see how your research might create impact beyond the university!
Register here: Registration for “From Research to Academic Startup” Workshop 05.12 10:00-12:45
NB! Registration deadline 02.12.2024
Audience: Open to all, with a special focus on PhD students, post-docs, and researchers at UiB Infomedia & SFI MediaFutures interested in exploring the path from academia to entrepreneurship.
Language: English

The Human Quotient for Better AI Systems
2024-12-10 11:00 - 12:00 | MediaFutures HQ, 3rd Floor, Tower 1, Media City, Media Futures HQ, 3rd floor, Bergen, 5008
Ujwal Gadiraju is a tenured Assistant professor in the Software Technology Department of the faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, and Computer Science at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. He co-directs the TU Delft “Design@Scale” AI Lab and is a member of the program management team of the TU Delft AI Labs.
He is the Vice-Chair of CHI Netherlands, representing the human-computer interaction community of academics and industry practitioners in the Netherlands, and has served as an ACM Distinguished Speaker. Ujwal leads a research line on Human-Centered AI and Crowd Computing, actively collaborating with experts in healthcare, finance, and education and working with a variety of industry partners and NGOs to tackle important societal problems.
Before joining the WIS group, Ujwal worked at the L3S Research Center as a Postdoctoral researcher between 2017-2020. He received a PhD degree (Dr. rer. nat.) in Computer Science with a summa cum laude recognition from the Leibniz University of Hannover, Germany, in 2017, an MSc. Computer Science degree from TU Delft, the Netherlands, in 2012, and a B.Tech. Computer Science and Engineering degree from VIT University, India in 2010.
His research interests lie at the intersection of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Information Retrieval (IR). Ujwal has published over 200 peer-reviewed articles in these fields. His work has been recognized with several honors, including 10 paper awards at top-tier HCI and AI conferences. His current research focuses on creating novel methods, interfaces, systems, and tools to overcome existing challenges on the path toward building more effective and inclusive AI systems and facilitating appropriate reliance of humans on such systems. For more information, see https://ujwalgadiraju.com.
Talk abstract:
The unprecedented rise in the adoption of artificial intelligence techniques and automation in many contexts is concomitant with the shortcomings of such technology concerning robustness, interpretability, usability, trustworthiness, and explainability. Crowd computing offers a viable means to leverage human intelligence at scale for data creation, enrichment, and interpretation, demonstrating a great potential to improve the performance of AI systems and improve the appropriate adoption of AI systems in general. How can we build AI systems that can augment human capabilities across different tasks and improve human experiences in various contexts? What can we do to facilitate appropriate trust and reliance of people on AI systems? By drawing from a series of recent empirical studies, this talk will highlight the intriguing and pertinent role of human input in propelling better AI technology in the quickly evolving age of generative models.

Rethinking Trust: Unveiling the Dynamics of Trust and Distrust
2024-12-16 16:00 - 17:00 | U.Phil Auditorium
Title: Rethinking Trust: Unveiling the Dynamics of Trust and Distrust
Research on trust is highly interdisciplinary and has produced an impressive body of knowledge about its forms, causes and consequences. However, existing research agendas have notable biases, two of which are the focus of this presentation: first, research privileges trust while marginalising distrust, resulting in an incomplete and flawed understanding; second, it engages in sweeping generalisations, overlooking distinctions between trust in people, institutions and machines. This presentation proposes ways to conceptualise trust and distrust as complementary phenomena and explores the specific dynamics that govern trust relationships with humans, institutions and machines.
Bio:
Christian Lahusen is Professor of Sociology at the University of Siegen, Germany. In his work Lahusen has paid special attention to the relation between state authorities and citizens, focusing on both the attitudinal and the behavioural levels. He has been studying political and civic engagement, in later years with a strong focus on solidarity and trust. His work documents the importance of citizens’ empowerment, but also the situational and contextual conditions that hamper it. His recurrent involvement in large-scale interdisciplinary research projects has led to a number of co-authored publications. He has published extensively in the fields of political sociology, contentious politics and societal integration and has led several national and international research projects in these areas. Lahusen was the coordinator of the Horizon 2020 project Enlightened trust: An examination of trust and distrust in governance – conditions, effects and remedies.

Northern Lights Deep Learning Conference
2025-01-07 08:00 - 17:00 | Tromsø
Deep learning is an emerging subfield in machine learning that has in recent years achieved state-of-the-art performance in image classification, object detection, segmentation, time series prediction and speech recognition to name a few. This conference will gather researchers both on a national and international level to exchange ideas, encourage collaborations and present cutting-edge research.
Keynote topic: A technical talk on recommender systems, focusing on how this technology is often used to enhance misinformation and create echo chambers, and what can be done to combat this.

Lerchendalkonferansen 2025
2025-02-04 08:00 - 2025-02-05 17:00 | Scandic Nidelven, TRONDHEIM
The Lerchendal conference serves as an important meeting place for approximately 200 leaders and talents from politics, business, and academia. It is a platform where Norway’s key decision-makers and innovators come together to discuss, share, and shape the future.
The conference is the perfect arena for those who want to shape the future, broaden their perspective, and gain new knowledge.
MediaFutures centre leader Christoph Trattner will hold a presentation on Day 1 of the conference. He will focus on our research on misinformation, addressing its broader meaning on democracy, the economy, and other societal areas.
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Desinformasjon og falske nyheter – hvordan det kan true sikkerhet og demokrati

Innlegget holdes på engelsk

Christoph Trattner, Professor, Director MediaFutures: Research Centre for Responsible Media Technology and Innovation, Universitetet i Bergen
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This Year’s Theme: Geopolitics and the Technological Race
How does the global power struggle impact technology, business, and value creation?
The conference is a collaboration between the Research Council of Norway, Tekna, NTNU, and SINTEF.

AI & Media: The Transformative Impact of AI in the Media Industry
2025-02-27 17:00 - 20:00 | Google, Bryggegata 6, Oslo, 0254
Our Innovation Coordinator, Christopher Senf, and PhD candidate, Peter Andrews, have been invited to speak at Oslo AI’s next event at Google’s office on Misinformation and Disinformation in the Age of AI. They will introduce the Center and present a live demo of the AI Moderator.
Topic: AI & Media: The Transformative Impact of AI in the Media Industry
Speakers:
Christian Schüssler Oslo Kreativ AI
Igor Pipkin, PhD DN Media Group
Christopher Senf, PhD (SFI MediaFutures,UiB) and Peter Andrews, PhD candidate (SFI MediaFutures, UiB)
Christian Schüssler, Founder of Reimagine AS and organizer of Oslo Kreativ AI (kreativai.no)

“The Future of Visual Storytelling”
Join film director and founder of Reimagine and Oslo Kreativ AI, Christian Schüssler, on an inspiring journey into the next era of media, creativity and storytelling. We explore how artificial intelligence is revolutionizing the creative process, empowering artists, and unlocking a new realms of visual expression and narrative possibilities.

Igor Pipkin, PhD, Head of Data & Insights at DN Media Group (dngroup.com)
(more to come)
Join us for an insightful event featuring three expert talks on the revolutionary impact of AI in the media industry, from streamlining content creation to transforming audience engagement. Discover how cutting-edge AI technologies are reshaping the future of media and entertainment.
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Agenda (preliminary):
17:00-17:30 – Arrive at Google office for food, soft drinks and networking
17:30-17:40 – Welcome and introduction by the Oslo.AI team
17:40-19:40 – Presentations with Q&A
19:40-20:00 – Wrap-up and short mingling
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This event is organized by Oslo.AI, the largest community for AI enthusiasts and professionals in Norway with 3500 members. Oslo AI was founded with the goal of spreading knowledge on how artificial intelligence can be applied to contribute to creating a better society. Oslo AI strives to create an active and engaged AI community, the main focus being quarterly AI events with a specific theme. Their mission is to be the meeting place for people interested in how applied AI shapes business, technology, and society.
This in-person event is made possible by the Oslo AI team and their sponsors: Google, Inmeta & Microsoft.
Register for a free ticket here: https://lnkd.in/d_kZQieK

Announcement of the 2025 Holberg Prize and Nils Klim Prize
2025-03-13 09:00 - 10:00 | University Aula, UiB
On Thursday, 13 March, the 2025 Holberg Prize and Nils Klim Prize will be announced at the University Aula in Bergen.
At the event, the Rector of the University of Bergen, Margareth Hagen, will present welcoming remarks. The Chair of the Holberg Prize Board, Professor Jørgen Sejersted, will announce the recipients of the Holberg Prize and the Nils Klim Prize. We will also hear the citations from the Academic Committees, before the Holberg Prize Academic Director, Professor Bjørn Enge Bertelsen, will lead a conversation between experts on the Laureates and their scholarly work.
There will be a musical performance, and a light breakfast will be served.
We ask that those who wish to attend the event in person to register.
The livestream requires no registration.
Doors open 8:40
About the Prizes
The Holberg Prize is awarded annually to a scholar who has made outstanding contributions to research in the humanities, social sciences, law or theology. The recipient must have had a decisive influence on international research. The Prize is worth NOK 6,000,000.
The Nils Klim Prize is awarded annually in the above fields, to a young researcher. The candidate must be a citizen of a Nordic country or be formally affiliated with a Nordic research institution. Also, the candidate must be under 35 years of age at the nomination deadline. The Prize is worth NOK 500,000.

Mid-term evaluation of PhD candidate Bilal Mahmood
2025-04-03 15:30 - 16:30 | SFI MediaFutures, MCB
On Thursday, April 3rd, PhD candidate Bilal Mahmood will have his mid-term evaluation.
Main supervisor: Mehdi Elahi
Co-Supervisor: Samia Touileb
External Evaluator: Sole Pera

Mid-term evaluation of PhD candidate Jia-Hua Jeng
2025-04-04 09:15 - 10:15 | SFI MediaFutures, MCB
On Friday, April 4, PhD candidate Jia-Hua Jeng will have his mid-term evaluation.
Main supervisor: Christoph Trattner
Co-Supervisors: Erik Knudsen, Alain Starke
External Evaluator: Sole Pera

Talks on Responsible Recommender Systems
2025-04-04 10:45 - 13:00 | SFI MediaFutures, MCB
April 4, MediaFutures sets the stage for a joined event featuring a series of talks, including contributions from Sole Pera (TU Delft) and the PhD candidates Lukas Wegmeth and Tobias Vente (University of Siegen).

10:45 – 11:45 | Sole Pera on “Into the AI-Known: How Search and Recommender Systems Shape Children’s Online Experiences & the Path to Safer Information Access”
12:00 – 13:00 | Lukas Wegmeth & Tobias Vente, “Green Recommender Systems – Minimizing Carbon Footprint for Sustainable Personalization”

Sole Pera, Associate Professor @ Delft University of Technology
Time: 10:45 – 11:45
Title: “Into the AI-Known: How Search and Recommender Systems Shape Children’s Online Experiences & the Path to Safer Information Access”
Abstract: In the AI era, search and recommendation systems increasingly shape how children perceive the world and interact with digital media. However, these systems are seldom designed with young users in mind, leading to exposure to content that is misleading, inappropriate, or simply not aligned with their needs. While AI has the potential to improve online information access, ensuring safe, effective, and age-appropriate digital experiences remains a challenge. In this talk, we will explore how mainstream search and recommendation algorithms influence what children encounter online. Along the way, we review current research, discuss the challenges and opportunities in building safer digital environments, and consider the ethical implications of designing AI-driven information access systems that prioritize children’s rights and well-being.
Dr. Maria Soledad Pera is an Associate Professor at the Web Information Systems group of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science (EWI), Delft University of Technology. Sole’s main area of expertise is in Information Retrieval with emphasis on non-traditional population.
Lukas Wegmeth & Tobias Vente, PhD candidates at University of Siegen
Time: 12:00 – 13:00
Title: “Green Recommender Systems – Minimizing Carbon Footprint for Sustainable Personalization”
Abstract: Did you know one recommender systems research paper emits ~3,300 kgCO₂e — the same as one person flying from New York to Melbourne? This talk unveils the urgent need for Green Recommender Systems and delivers actionable guidelines to achieve them. We quantify the carbon footprint of training and inference, comparing deep learning and traditional algorithms. The goal? High-performance recommender systems that don’t cost the Earth. Discover how to minimize the carbon footprint while maintaining performance through energy-aware design, efficient hardware, and transparent reporting. This is a call to action: by rethinking how we design and measure recommenders, we can pioneer sustainable AI that benefits both users and the planet.
Lukas Wegmeth is a Ph.D. Student of the Intelligent Systems Group at the University of Siegen. Before joining the ISG he completed his bachelor’s and master’s degree in Medical Computer Science at the University of Siegen. During his time as a graduate student, Lukas set his focus on the topic of Machine Learning and collaborated with different chairs of the University of Siegen to work on and release scientific research papers in the field. Lukas is currently analysing recommender systems from an energy efficiency context, measuring amongst other power consumptions.
Tobias is a joint Ph.D. candidate at the ISG – Intelligent Systems Group (University of Siegen) in Siegen, Germany and the ADReM – Adrem Data Lab (University of Antwerp) in Antwerp, Belgium, working on model selection and automation in recommender systems. Generally, his research interests revolve around Recommender Systems, specifically applying ideas from AutoML (Automated Machine Learning) to information retrieval and recommender systems.
To follow the talks online, follow us on zoom:
https://uib.zoom.us/j/65989683261?pwd=[REDACTED]

Mid-term evaluation of PhD candidate Khadiga Seddik
2025-04-04 14:00 - 15:00 | SFI MediaFutures, MCB
On Friday, April 4th, PhD candidate Khadiga Seddik will have her mid-term evaluation.
Main supervisor: Erik Knudsen
Co-Supervisor: Damian Trilling, Alain Starke (Step-in)
External Evaluator: Sole Pera

Title: The Influence of News Recommender technology on Shaping Selective Exposure and Sharing.
Abstract:
Despite the benefits the news recommenders provide, overly personalized news recommendations and too much exposure to like-minded news can pose a threat to democracy by leading to filter bubble, echo-chambers, and political polarization. These negative consequences are not given, but they could depend on conditions and factors under which news recommenders amplify or reduce selective exposure. Many studies argue that news recommenders can be programmed to promote factors that reduce selective exposure because they are programmed by human beings, and they are dependent on the decisions surrounding the implementation and design of the technology. However, programming recommender systems to shape selective exposure is not a straightforward task, as we don’t know which factors the recommenders should be designed to promote, as well as how the recommenders should promote them. In this research project I investigate the heavily debated consequences of news recommender technologies, selective exposure and selective of like-minded news. The aim is to shift the scholarly attention from uncovering whether the current recommenders amplify or reduce selective exposure to understanding the conditions under which recommender systems do so, given that they are designed for that purpose. By doing so, we shift the responsibility for the democratic implications of recommenders from the technology itself to the decisions surrounding the implementation and design.
The project is a part of a larger project, the NEWSREC project (https://www.newsrec.ai). The main objective of NEWSREC project is to study, understand, and assess the precise conditions under which algorithmic news recommenders have positive or negative effects on the democratic role of the news media by focusing on both the input side and the output side of news recommenders.

MIX Innovation Day 2025
2025-05-09 11:00 - 14:00 | Media City Bergen, Atrium
Teklab from the Infomedia department in UiB invites to its yearly MIX Innovation Days. Happening in Media City Bergen on Friday May 9th at 11 o’clock, the final year students in media and interaction design (MIX) will pitch their design prototypes and value propositions at a lively event with co-students, university colleagues and industry partners.
The MIX Innovation Day has been held for several years, and is a vibrant arena where bachelor and master students in MIX present their design solutions and prototypes. A jury evaluates the prototypes and hands out the MVP Award – the Minimum Viable Proptotype Award.
At the MIX Innovation Day 2025 you can learn more about seventeen different designs created to tackle real-world challenges across a range of industries, including computer games, apps and web sites for partners as diverse as the Media Cluster Norway, Bergen Bysykkel and Parkinsonforbundet.
SIGN UP HERE
Program
The event takes place in the Atrium at Media City Bergen, Lars Hilles gate 30, next to the Bergen Light Rail station Nygård.
11:00 – 11.05. Welcome.
Our master of ceremony Joao Ribeiro will introduce the event.
11.05 – 12:00: Bachelor webdesign projects.
The five bachelor projects will be presented in a series of pitches with comments from the jury. Read all about the projects below.
12:00 – 13:30: Master safari and lunch.
The twelve master projects will be presented simultaneously at a “safari” where the audience walk from stand to stand and talk with the students and discuss the projects’ merits. Read all about the projects below.
You will also be able to enjoy your free lunch during this session.
13:30 – 13.40. Launch of “Håndbok i innovasjon for studenter”.
TekLab recently published the free online book “Håndbok i innovasjon for studenter” and today it will be officially launched. The TekLab project has spent several years writing it, and a large numer of students and teachers have been involved in the project.
13.40 – 14:00: Awards ceremony.
The jury will announce the winners of the MVP Award for the bachelor and master projects.
The MVP Award
A jury of professional designers will evaluate the projects and give the students valuable feedback. The jury will hand out the MVP award to the project that has the best chance of becoming a real product in the media industry, hence the name “minimum viable product” (MVP). There are separate prizes for the bachelor and master programs. The prize has been awarded for several years in a row, and you can read about the winners from 2024 and the winner from 2023.
The jury is:

Precilia Isaksen is a UX consultant at Bouvet. She was named Designer of the Week by UX Norway in 2024. Precilia is a former MIX student and has previously worked at TV 2.
Sofija Ivanova is a service designer at Youwell, a patient and health technology company. She is a board member of IxDA Bergen and has worked at several design agencies.
Iselin Kornli holds an MSc in innovation and entrepreneurship and has spent the past nine years leading innovation projects, coaching cross-functional teams, and helping to establish innovation environments in several major companies.

We are really grateful that Precilia, Sofija and Iselin will join us as jury members.
Organization
The event is organized by The department of information science and media studies at UiB in collaboration with Agenda Vestlandet. Agenda Vestlandet was established by Sparebanken Vest to drive the green transition in Vestlandet, and it supports research, innovation, and dialogue around regional challenges and opportunities.
The event is prepared and managed by MIX master students Anine Glenne Arnesen and Julie Teilstad Østby in collaboration with Joao Ribeiro, lead open innovation manager at GALP and a teacher at UiB, and professor Lars Nyre.

Phd Defense of Sohail Ahmed Khan
2025-06-03 09:15 - 15:00 | Ulrike Pihls Hus, Ulrikes aula, Professor Keysers gate 1, Bergen, Norway
On Tuesday, June 3rd, PhD candidate Sohail Ahmed Khan will defend his PhD thesis “Computational Visual Content Verification”. The trial lecture starts at 09.15, and the defense starts at 10.30.
In his dissertation, Sohail Khan explores how newsrooms verify visual user-generated content (UGC) and examines growing challenges related to manipulated media content such as deepfakes and cheapfakes. The dissertation analyses current verification practices in journalism, maps existing tools and workflows, and uncovers a clear gap between technological advances and newsroom practices.
Through the thesis, Sohail contributes both a critical review of the current verification landscape and new AI-based methods for detecting deepfakes and cheapfakes. The research also emphasises the need for closer collaboration between researchers and journalists, and highlights initiatives to build a research community around these challenges, including through international media verification competitions.
Opponents:

Professor Giulia Boato, Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science, University of Trento
Associate Professor Nhien-An Le-Khac, School of Computer Science, University College Dublin

Chair of the committee: Professor Bjørnar Tessem
Chair of the defense: Professor Knut Helland

AI, rights and development of Norwegian language models
2025-06-23 16:00 - 20:00 | Union Scene, Drammen
Artificial intelligence (AI) and language technology have developed rapidly in recent years. The language models used in AI services are trained on vast amounts of text, often without permission from or compensation to the rights holders.
In Norway, there is broad political agreement that we need Norwegian language models. Public and private AI services should reflect the Norwegian and Sámi languages, history, and culture, and there is a need for Norwegian alternatives to international services.
Much is at stake. AI services are already weakening the economic foundation for, among others, translators, illustrators, and those who write and publish educational materials. At the same time, the National Library has documented that language models improve when trained on protected content, such as books and newspapers.
Do Norwegian authors and publishers have a social responsibility to contribute content to Norwegian models if they are compensated?Would such agreements drain an already vulnerable cultural sector by accelerating a shift where human creativity loses ground?Perhaps this is a unique opportunity to set a precedent: that training on protected material must be paid for. New income streams for the cultural field could enable the creation and publication of new works of great value to society.
Panel discussion featuring experts in the field:

Trine Skei Grande, CEO of the Norwegian Publishers Association

Espen Ytreberg, author and professor of media studies

Lilja Øvrelid, professor and head of the Language Technology Group at the Department of Informatics, University of Oslo, MediaFutures Work Package 5 member

Hege Munch Gundersen, CEO of Kopinor

The event is free and open to all. Welcome!

Pint of Science x MediaFutures
2025-06-26 19:00 - 21:00 | Staatsraaden bar, Bergen, Bradbenken 2, Bergen, 5003, Norway
Had Enough of Office Talk and Formal Seminars?
Yeah, us too.
That’s why we’re shaking things up and teaming up with Pint of Science to bring research out of the lecture halls and into your local bar! Join us for our very first Pint of Science night, right in the cosy atmosphere of Staatsraaden bar in Bergen.
Pint of Science is a global, non-profit movement where thousands of researchers in 500+ cities share their work in pubs, cafés, and public spaces. No slides packed with jargon. No academic gatekeeping. Just real science, served with a drink.
This evening’s theme: The Future of Media Technology
Expect three short and super accessible talks from our MediaFutures researchers, each just 10–15 minutes long. They’ve boiled down their work to the juicy bits so you can sip your beer and still get smarter.
The vibe? Casual, fun, and all about conversation. You’ll get to meet the scientists, ask questions, and even take part in a quick quiz to wrap up the night.
So whether you’re a media geek, techie, curious mind, or just someone looking for a different kind of night out, grab a friend or come solo and join us for a pint of science (or soda).
We can’t wait to meet you and hear what you think the future of media should look like.

Samia Touileb
Associate Professor
Talk Title: Bias in Large Language Models

Yuki Onishi
Researcher
Talk title: Can eye gaze show us what future TV production galleries looks like?

Peter Andrews
PhD Candidate
Talk Title: Enhancing Debates with a AI Powered Political Co-Pilot

Arendalsuka: "AI in the media: Empowering editors and safeguarding democracy"
2025-08-12 15:00 - 15:45 | Arendalsuka, Kunstig Intelligens-teltet Kirkebakken 19, Tyholmen, Arendal, Norway
MediaFutures Centre Leader Christoph Trattner, Innovation Coordinator Christopher Senf and MediaFutures Industry Partners will talk about AI in the Media: Empowering Editors and Safeguarding Democracy.
Program
Session 1: Introducing SFI MediaFutures (10 min.):
15:00—15:02:
“A Research Centre for Responsible MediaTechnology and Innovation”
Anne Nielsen (Head of Administration @ SFI MediaFutures)
15:02—15:10:
“MediaFutures in Action: Combating Visual Misinformation with C2PA”
Christoph Trattner (Director @ SFI MediaFutures)
Session 2: AI as a Tool to Empower Editors (20 min.):
15:10—15:20:
“Real Journalist, Virtual Avatar: What We Learned at TV2 from Peeking into Pandora’s Box with KI-Kjetil” (10 min.)
Lubos Steskal and Chris Ronald Hermansen (AI Team @ TV2)
15:20—15:30:
“Leveraging AI for Fac- Checking and Investigative Journalism” (10 min.)
Morten Langfeldt Dahlback (Head of Innovation @ Faktisk.no)
Session 3: AI as a Tool to Preserve Democracy (15 min.):
15:30—15:35
“Reimagining Debate with AI: Fighting Disinformation with a Political Co-Moderator” (5 min.)
Chris Senf (Innovation Coordinator @ SFI MediaFutures)
15:35—15:45:
“Truth Tech: How AI Verifies Political Claims” (10min.)
Gaute Kokkvoll (Head of Product @ Factiverse)

Book Launch: Schibsted – The Digital Transformation of a Nordic Media Giant
2025-08-22 10:00 - 11:00 | Medielab, tower 3, 9. floor, Media City Bergen.
How do you steer one of the Nordics’ largest media companies through the digital revolution while aiming to grow stronger on the other side?
We invite you to a conversation with Ole J. Mjøs, author and Professor of Media Studies at the University of Bergen, who has closely studied Schibsted’s strategic choices, digital transformation, and international journey.
Joining the discussion are Kjersti Løken Stavrum, CEO of the Tinius Trust (Schibsted’s owner) and Chair of the Schibsted Board, and Didrik Munch, former CEO of Schibsted Norway and a key figure in building the company’s strong position. The conversation will be moderated by Sølve Rydland, Political Editor at Bergensavisen (BA).
Together, they will explore some of the big questions:

What have been Schibsted’s greatest successes—and crises?

Which turning points shaped its digital expansion?

Why was the company split?

What is at stake in the battle against global platform giants?

And what lies ahead for a company determined to become the Nordic region’s leading media destination?

This is a rare opportunity to gain firsthand insights into the past, present, and future of one of the most influential media companies of our time.
Organizers: The Centre for Investigative Journalism (SUJO), the Media Industry and Journalism Research Group (Department of Information Science and Media Studies, University of Bergen), and Media Cluster.

Towards Responsible AI for Local Journalism
2025-08-27 14:15 - 16:00 | SFI MediaFutures, MCB
We hereby invite you to a talk by Dr. Reshmi Pillai, Vrije University, Amsterdam, on responsible AI for local journalism where she presents an ongoing research project. The studies include a graph-based retrieval augmented generation for news background information, text simplification of news reports, usage of LLM personas for news feedback for journalists.

About Reshmi Pillai:

Dr Reshmi Pillai is a Post-doctoral Research Associate in the Department of Communication Science at the Vrije University Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in the project “Towards Responsible AI for Local Journalism”. Earlier, she was a Lecturer (Docent 4) in the Masters’ Information Studies program in the Informatics Institute at the University of Amsterdam (2019-2023). In 2021, she was awarded Ph.D. for her thesis titled “Expressions of psychological stress on twitter: detection and characterisation”, from the University of Wolverhampton, UK.

In her research, Reshmi explores human-centred AI applications to support societally embedded workflows and challenges—particularly in journalism. Collaborating with a Dutch news media organization, she led design thinking sessions to identify practical challenges in newsroom settings. This led to several applied projects grounded in Natural Language Processing including: a graph-based Retrieval-Augmented Generation system that provides contextual background to journalists from sources like Wikipedia and news archives, experimental prompting strategies for rewriting news headlines on social media in varied linguistic styles, the development of LLM-based news reader personas to explore cultural inclusivity and evaluations of text simplification models to assess their treatment of stylistic and rhetorical devices.

Book launch: Teen Boys and their Smartphones as Worldmaking Devices
2025-09-05 12:15 - 14:00 | SFI MediaFutures, MCB
Welcome to the launch of Dr. John Magnus R. Dahl’s book : Teen Boys and their Smartphones as Worldmaking Devices. 5th of September we invite to an event in which our previous Postdoctoral researcher Dahl presents how he spent two years on ethnographic fieldwork, following six teenage boys on- and offline to find out how they use their smartphones to create a world for themselves and their peers.
He asked himself: What is it like to be a young man in the age of the smartphone?
He concludes, among other things, that the smartphone is a crucial tool for creating the kinds of social relationships the boys consider important, and thus a way to increase freedom and agency in their own lives. Furthermore, he shows that this is especially significant for minority boys: queer boys and boys with immigrant backgrounds use their phones differently than straight, white boys.
John Magnus R. Dahl
The launch will take the form of a book conversation between Dahl and Professor Kristine Jørgensen, project leader of Understanding Masculinity in Gaming, followed by an opportunity for questions. The conversation will be held in English. and light refreshments will be served.
The book is published by Palgrave Macmillan and is based on the research Dahl conducted as a postdoctoral fellow at MediaFutures (UiB) from 2021 to 2024. He is now employed as Assistant Professor at the University of Copenhagen.
The e-book is available here, and a longer article about the book’s findings can be read here (in Norwegian).

Innovasjonsuken OPP - 2025
2025-09-15 08:00 - 2025-09-21 17:00 | Bergen
This is Vestlands innovation festival and platform for networking and sharing knowledge. OPP celebrates each year entrepreneurship together with several local partners to highlight their work on innovation. In short, OPP is gathering events from local innovative companies during these two weeks to focus on how innovation can look like in the region of Vestlandet.
We want to feature some of these events which are relevant for MediaFutures followers and supports:
Demo Day Vestlandet
Wednesday 17.09 kl. 12:00 – 18:00
Thormøhlensgate 51
Demo Day Vestlandet annually connects good ideas with capital. Here, selected startup companies from Vestlandet get the opportunity to pitch their ideas in front of a packed audience of investors. A whole day is filled with presentations and exciting meetings. Demo Day Vestlandet is a unique meeting place for you who are an early-stage investor. Every year, 150 investors and funds gather for a party day in Bergen in connection with the OPP Innovation Week. We invite the most exciting, and investor-ready, companies in the west (Rogaland, Vestland and Møre og Romsdal) to a day filled with exciting meetings, presentations and entertainment. Here you get insight into what is happening in the early-stage investor environment and which ideas and companies are worth investing in. You also get the opportunity to meet other investors to expand your network and connections.
UiB Innovation Day: 200 years of research and innovation
Friday 19.09 kl. 09:00 – 15:00
Læringsarena, UiB, Nygårdsgaten 5
On September 19, the University of Bergen is pleased to invite you to UiB Innovation Day, a meeting place for researchers, students and partners from the business and public sectors in the region. The day will focus on research and innovation at all UiB faculties, where we will showcase some of the most exciting projects being developed at UiB with the goal of strengthening collaboration between research and the society around us. The Innovation Day will also mark 200 years of research and innovation in Bergen, including an anniversary exhibition on the occasion of the University Museum of Bergen’s 200th anniversary.
PopOPP
Friday 19.09 kl. 16:30 – Saturday 20.09 kl. 00:00
Marineholmen
On Friday, September 19, students and young adults with drive and ideas will gather for a festival experience a little out of the ordinary. It’s about progress. About creating. About connecting to something bigger. What can you expect? Scenes. Flavors. Atmospheres. People you haven’t met before. Questions you haven’t asked yet. And hopefully a lot of answers.

The future of mobile human-machine interaction
2025-09-16 16:30 - 18:00 | Realfagbygget, Auditorium 2 (basement), Allegaten 41
The use of portable devices is now ubiquitous in our society. Our daily lives are shaped by ever-evolving interactive devices and applications from touch-based smartwatches and tablets to large digital screens.
Although smart devices like laptops, tablets, and smartphones are mobile, users are usually either stationary or risk their physical safety by using such devices while moving. The health consequences of today’s mobile devices are well documented. These include, among other things, how a predominantly sedentary lifestyle affects health and well-being.
This lecture will present innovative thinking, design, and engineering in the field of mobile human-computer interaction (HCI). At the end, there will be time for questions from the audience.

Date: Tuesday, September 16, 2025
Location: Realfagbygget, Auditorium 2 (basement), Allegaten 41
Time: The lecture starts at 16:30 Light refreshments will be served outside the auditorium from 16:00

The meeting is open to everyone and will be in Norwegian.
About the Speaker
Morten Fjeld is a professor in human-computer interaction (HCI) at the University of Bergen and Chalmers University of Technology. He researches interactive systems with a focus on tangible and mobile interaction. Fjeld holds a double master’s degree in applied mathematics from NTNU and ENSIMAG Grenoble, as well as a PhD from ETH Zurich, where he also received the ETH medal in 2002. He has been a visiting professor in Singapore, Japan, and Switzerland, and has extensive industry experience in fluid mechanics, simulators, and user interfaces.

Human-AI Interaction for video Content: Designing and Engineering Multimodal Conversational Agents
2025-09-29 09:15 - 14:00 | Jusbygget, Auditorium 3
Our PhD Candidate Peter Andrews will defend his thesis on September 29th at the University of Bergen.
Trial lecture starts at 09:15 and the defense at 10.30.
We want to encourage you to attend his trial lecture and defense, and learn more about HCI.
Title:
Human-AI Interaction for video Content: Designing and Engineering Multimodal Conversational Agents
Abstract:

As young adults increasingly shift away from conventional news sources, interactive and AI-driven media present a new frontier for their engagement in news consumption. Young adults often prefer more interactive video content on streaming platforms, challenging the traditional model of passive video consumption. Second screening, interacting with a second device while watching a primary display, has emerged to satisfy the need for interaction and support with additional content and context. However, second screening can hinder comprehension, revealing the need to synchronize the experience.

This thesis unifies the second screening experience with Computer Vision (CV) and Deep Learning (DL), thereby building an interactive video framework following the textit{From Video to Data} $to$ textit{From Data to Narrative} $to$ textit{From Narrative to Interaction} paradigm. The result is a Multimodal Conversational Agent (MCA) that can hyper-contextualize video content. This video framework encompasses three research questions: 1) How can recent advances in computer vision and artificial intelligence facilitate interaction with video content? 2) How can interactive video increase subjective understanding of the content? 3) How do young adults perceive the user experience of interactive video for news broadcasts? Answering these questions gives a better grasp of what is needed to build an end-to-end interactive video framework with AI. At the same time, empirical research can show how the capabilities of the framework can improve user experience and comprehension.

To address these questions, I develop prototypes for interactive video in sports (football) and politics. I approached the video framework in a modular manner with four in-house design prototypes – FootyVision, the Automated Commentary System (ACS), AiCommentator, and AiModerator. Collectively, these four prototypes demonstrate how CV- and NLP-based event detection and LLM-powered MCAs can synchronize and facilitate real-time interaction with video content. I tested prototypes in lab-based mixed method studies and found that interactive video with MCA can enhance engagement, immersion, and subjective understanding. However, a Human-AI Interaction (HAI) trade-off between automation and user control occurs. While a high degree of automation can tightly synchronize the experience, it comes at the cost of user control. The affordances of MCA include multimodal feedback and remediation. Multimodal feedback supports subjective understanding, which aligns with the Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning (CTML). Remediation involves repurposing traditional roles in innovative ways. MCAs achieve this by transforming sports commentators and political moderators into remediated personas, thus leading to increased engagement. Moreover, MCAs can also push the user into a more objective viewing state, highlighting a trade-off between objectivity and emotional involvement. Finally, trust is paramount for high-stakes environments where transparency is crucial.

Overall, my research challenges traditional linear media by integrating CV, DL, and NLP into an interactive framework that facilitates on-demand information augmented by the information space. However, future systems must address key concerns regarding the aforementioned trade-offs and the management of cognitive load. I recommend variable autonomy and transparency to give the user control over the experience, reinforcing both trust and understanding through Human-Centered AI (HCAI). By synthesizing these findings in human-AI interaction (HAI) and multimedia learning frameworks, my work provides valuable insights for researchers, developers, and broadcasters looking to engage the next generation of news consumers through interactive video.

Opponents:

Dr. (Research Director, DR2) Petra Isenberg , Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire des Sciences du Numérique, Université Paris-Saclay
Prof Huamin Qu, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Head of committee
Prof Miroslav Bachinski
Moderator of the defense
Prof Bjørnar Tessem

Research Ethics Day at the UiB 2025
2025-10-03 09:00 - 12:00 | Storsalen, Nygårdsgaten 5, University of Bergen, 5015 Bergen
It is fundamental for a knowledge-based society that the research underpinning policy is trustworthy. It is thus crucial that research is conducted to the highest ethical standards. To increase awareness of the importance of research ethics at the University of Bergen, we have established an annual research ethics day. This year’s conference has the main theme of ‘Research Ethics After AI.’ We look forward to a day of meaningful discussion on this important topic.
Register here by latest 02.10.2025 – 16.00

RESEARCH ETHICS AFTER AI
PROGRAMME

08.30
Light breakfast buffet

09.00
Introduction of today´s programme: Marit Bakke, Professor, Dean, Faculty of Medicine, UiB, and Chair of the Programme Committee

09.05
Welcome address: Kjell Morten Myhr, Professor, Vice Rector for Research and Innovation, UiB

09.10
Session 1: Big, Biased, and Synthetic: Data after AI
How is AI changing and challenging practices of data collection, generation and validation?
Keynote Anna Feigenbaum, Professor of Media and Digital Storytelling, School of Social & Political Sciences, University of Glasgow
Title: Dancing with Robots? AI, Participation and Ethical Interactivity.
A conversation:

Budhaditya Chattopadhyay, Postdoctoral Fellow, Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, UiB

Anna Feigenbaum, Professor of Media and Digital Storytelling, School of Social & Political Sciences, University of Glasgow

Torger Kielland, Professor, Faculty of Law, UiB.

Helge Ræder, Professor, Vice Dean for Innovation, Faculty of Medicine, UiB

Moderator: Gabriele de Seta, Researcher and Project Leader, Department of Linguistic, Literary and Aesthetic Studies, Faculty of Humanities, UiB

10.00
Break

10.20
Session 2: Trust in the black box: Data Analysis after AI
How is AI changing and challenging practices of data analysis?
A conversation:

Julien Brajard, Senior Researcher, Climate Modeling, NERSC.

Pekka Parviainen, Associate Professor, Machine Learning Group, Department of Informatics, Faculty of Science and Technology, UiB.

Anne Sigrid Refsum, Postdoctoral Fellow, AI STORIES project, Department of Linguistic, Literary and Aesthetic Studies, Faculty of Humanities, UiB

Moderator: Nathalie Reuter, Professor, Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science and Technology, UiB

11.10
Session 3: Building Ethical Literacy: Towards a New Era of Research Ethics.
How do we prepare researchers for an AI-driven research landscape?
Presentation by: Lina Harder, PhD Candidate, Project: Extending Digital Narrative, Center for Digital Narrative, Department of Linguistic, Literary and Aesthetic Studies, Faculty of Humanities, UiB
A conversation:

Anders Goksøyr, Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science and Technology, UiB and Deputy Member of the National Committee for Research Ethics in Science and Technology – NENT.
Kari Steen-Johnsen, Research Professor, Institute for Social Research, UiO and Deputy chair of the National Committee for Research Ethics in the Social Sciences and the Humanities – NESH
Ingrid Miljeteig, Professor, Department of Global Public Health and Primary Care, Faculty of Medicine, UiB and Deputy Member of the National Research Ethics Committees- NEM

Moderator: Ragna Aarli, Professor, Faculty of Law, UiB

12.00
Closing remarks: Marit Bakke, Professor, Dean, Faculty of Medicine, UiB, and Chair of the Programme Committee

12.05
Lunch

Disinformation and Trust in Science in the U.S. and Beyond
2025-10-14 14:00 - 15:00 | Årstadveien 17
2025 has been a year of unprecedented cuts to global development aid, significant political tensions, and increased attacks on science and academia. What are the implications of these developments for health globally, health research, and trust in science in general?
The Bergen Centre for Ethics and Priority Setting in Health (BCEPS) has invited Professor Ezekiel Emanuel from the University of Pennsylvania, a world-leading bioethicist, to shed light on recent changes and current impacts of this challenging political climate on disinformation and trust in science, especially in the context of health research and policy.
This is a unique chance to hear directly from a leading American researcher, physician, and writer, who has also been instrumental in US health policy under the Obama and Biden administrations. He contributes actively to the public debate about current US policies in the press and social media. After the presentation, there will be time for a Q&A session with the audience.
The event will be held in English and is free and open to the public.
TIME: 14 October, kl. 1400 – 1500
PLACE: Alrek (Årstadveien 17), room Midgard,
About Professor Ezekiel (Zeke) Emanuel
Professor Emanuel received his MD from Harvard Medical School and his PhD in Political Philosophy from Harvard University. He is a practicing breast oncologist and currently serves as Vice Provost for Global Initiatives and Chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a special advisor to WHO Director General Dr. Tedros and previously served as a Special Advisor for Health Policy under President Obama, where he was instrumental in drafting the Affordable Care Act. Later, he served on the Biden-Harris Transition Covid Advisory Board. Professor Emanuel has published widely in leading scientific journals and has been described as the most cited bioethicist ever. He also contributes regularly to the New York Times. Professor Emanuel is a research team leader within the Bergen Centre of Ethics and Priority Setting in Health at the University of Bergen.

Recommender Systems and Nudges for Healthier Food Choice
2025-10-23 09:15 - 15:00 | Auditorium 2 Jussbygget
We are pleased to invite you to the trial lecture and public defence of Ayoub el Majjodi, PhD candidate at SFI MediaFutures.
Date: 23 OctoberVenue: Auditorium 2 Jussbygget, UiB
Time: 9:15
PhD Thesis:Recommender Systems and Nudges for Healthier Food Choices
Thesis Summary:
Recommender systems are widely used to address the challenge of information overload by presenting users with the most relevant content through personalization techniques. In the food domain, decision-making is particularly complex due to the multifaceted nature of food choices, which are influenced by a range of individual, contextual, and environmental factors. Despite this complexity, recommender systems have shown considerable promise in modeling real world food preferences and supporting users in navigating food related decisions. Their adoption in food applications has been steadily increasing, reflecting the growing importance and difficulty of making informed, personalized, and health-conscious dietary choices. Nonetheless, these systems have often been shown to generate predom- inantly popular food options, which tend to be less healthy. As users interact with such systems, they are repeatedly exposed to unhealthy choices, which in turn reinforces their preferences for these items. This feedback loop causes algorithms to prioritize popular yet nutritionally poor options, ultimately amplifying unhealthy eating behaviors with potential negative implications for public health. At the same time, digital nudging has emerged as a promising strategy for influencing user behavior in subtle and non intrusive ways. How- ever, limited research has investigated how digital nudges and recommender systems can be effectively combined particularly in user-centered settings aimed at supporting informed decision-making and promoting behavioral change. To address this gap, this thesis adopts a Design Science Research methodology to design, implement, and evaluate food recommender systems augmented with digital nudges. The research is documented across several peer-reviewed manuscripts and supported by both offline algorithmic evaluations and online user experiments. These studies examine how various preference elicitation methods, nudging techniques, and user characteristics such as food knowledge and dietary goals interact to shape user experience and behavior. The findings reveal that several nudging techniques warrant further investigation in the con- text of food recommender systems, particularly through user-centric evaluation approaches. Moreover, while digital nudges can support healthier food choices, their effectiveness varies depending on personalization, user familiarity, and system design. Interestingly, non-personalized recommendations with clear nutritional labeling were often more effective in encouraging healthy decisions than personalized options. Additionally, the interplay between preference elicitation methods, user knowledge, and nudging strate- gies significantly influenced user choices, interactions, and overall experience. This thesis contributes to the fields of recommender systems and persuasive technologies by demonstrating how digital nudges and system design features jointly influence health related decision-making. It emphasizes the importance of user-centric evaluation and lays the foundation for future research on adaptive nudging, long-term behavior change, and real- world deployments in food-related digital platforms.
Opponents:Associate Professor Alan Said, University of Gothenburg, SwedenAssistant Professor Julia Neidhardt, TU Vienna, Austria
Chair of the Committee:Associate Professor Erik Knudsen, Department of Information Science and Media Studies, University of Bergen
Defense Chair:Associate Professor Samia Touileb, Research Leader at the Department of Information Science and Media Studies, University of Bergen

Annual Meeting 25: Our public flagship conference
2025-11-13 09:00 - 19:00 | Scandic Ørnen, Bergen
On November 13, we are inviting to our yearly international flagship conference on media technology and AI. This is a public event and this year’s focus is:
Navigating Uncertainty with AI: Battling Misinformation & Empowering Users
— and we’d love for you to join us. Please register below.
The day is open to everyone: media professionals, researchers, students, technologists, and anyone curious about where media tech and AI are headed. It is a great opportunity to network, learn, and explore what is happening locally, nationally and internationally.
You can expect a full day of demonstrations, posters, presentations and panel talks, all centred on what is hot in media technology and AI right now. From theoretical frameworks to hands-on research and practical tools, the event offers a broad look at current projects and ongoing developments in the field.
Try out demos we have built, exchange ideas, and expand your view on how media tech can be developed and made more responsible for the future.

Registration closed

The deadline to register has passed. We can put you on the waiting list if you send us an email with your name and affiliation to office@mediafutures.no.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Cornelia Bjørke-Hill
Director Communication
Microsoft Norway
LinkedIn

Bio
Cornelia Bjørke-Hill is Communications Lead at Microsoft Norway, driving strategic narratives that connect global innovation with local impact. With over a decade in communications, including eight years as comms director within the HR tech industry, and more than 20 years in broadcast journalism for leading Norwegian media, Cornelia brings deep expertise in storytelling and trust-building. At Microsoft, she focuses on making AI relevant for Norway by translating global technology trends into meaningful value creation.

Keynote Speech
Title: Reinventing Communication with AI
Abstract:
In her talk, “Reinventing Communications with AI,” she reveals how intelligent tools amplify creativity and impact—without losing the human touch. Through real-world examples from her own craft, Cornelia demonstrates how AI can transform manual tasks into a strategic advantage, helping organizations communicate with clarity, authenticity, and purpose while using AI to use the human brain where it delivers the most impact.

Alex Connock
Senior Fellow & Professor
University of Oxford
LinkedIn

Bio
Dr Alex Connock is an academic in the media business and AI, who has written a trilogy of books spanning the contemporary media business – Media Management and Artificial Intelligence (2022) Media Management and Live Experience: Sports, Culture, Entertainment and Events (2024) and Entrepreneurship in Media and Entertainment (2025.)
He is also a leading international and industry speaker on the media business and how it is being changed by AI.
Academically, Alex is Senior Fellow at Oxford University’s Saïd Business School, teaching AI, Marketing and Media Business courses at BA, MBA and EMBA level. He co-launched and ran Oxford postgraduate diploma in Artificial Intelligence for Business from 2021-3. and is Lecturer at St Hugh’s College, Oxford in Management.
Alex is also Professor in Media and Artificial Intelligence at Exeter University, and Professor in Media Innovation and Sunderland University. He has a PhD in video optimisation for e-commerce and degrees from Oxford (PPE) Columbia (Journalism) and INSEAD (MBA).

Keynote Speech
Title: How can AI be your Superpower in 2026?
Abstract:
Everyone in media is now using AI to some extent. After years of holding back, many media companies are overtly all-in on it. Many others are still publicly reticent – whilst secretly going all-in behind the scenes. So three years after Chat GPT turned the world of content upside down, what are the particular, new AI strategies that will win for media producers and owners in 2026 ? Dr Alex Connock has specialised in the field at Oxford University since 2019 and wrote a globally successful book on it in 2022, republished from Türkiye to Korea. He will offer his latest thoughts on this fascinating and ever-changing subject. He will cover not only generative AI (words, images, sound and video) but also other areas of AI which sometimes get less coverage in media circles, but ought to: AI agents, Machine Learning techniques in research, recommendation algorithms and how to win at them, Intellectual Property and how to think about it, compliance, entrepreneurship, bias, geopolitics and AGI. In almost every case, Alex will explain how the received wisdom in the media industry is as wrong as it is right – and often both at the same time. And subsequent to that, in case anyone thinks AI is old hat, he’s also writing a new book on the Media and Quantum Computing, so he will offer some initial thoughts on that mind-expanding area as well: the real Black Mirror.

PROGRAM

08:00
Registration opens

08:55
Event Intro & Housekeeping

09:00
Welcome Addresses: Lars Nyre (UiB), Synnøve Kristine Nepstad Bendixsen (UiB), Christian Birkeland (TV2), Christoph Trattner (MediaFutures)

Keynotes

09:15
1st Keynote: “Reinventing Communication with AI” (Cornelia Bjørke-Hill, Microsoft Norway)

09:45
Moderated Q&A by Mehdi Elahi (MediaFutures & UiB)

10:00
2nd Keynote: “How can AI be your Superpower in 2026?” (Alex Connock, Oxford University)

10:30
Moderated Q&A by Alain Starke (MediaFutures & UvA)

10:45
Conference Picture & Coffee Break

Session 1: Reimagining Media: Industry at the AI Crossroads

11:05
Talk One: “Multimodal AI Agents in the Media Industry” (Zhixian Bao, Google Norway)

11:20
Talk Two: “AI Agents in Action: Transforming Work in Media & Entertainment” (Maxim Salnikov, Microsoft Norway)

11:35
Talk Three: “At the Crossroads of AI and Journalism: Competing, Collaborating, and Co-Creating the Future of Media” (Victorina Demirel, Schibsted)

11:50
Moderated Q&A by Andreas Lothe Opdahl (MediaFutures & UiB)

12:05
Lunch Break

Session 2: Computing for Society: Modeling Trust & Interactions

13:15
Talk One: “Integrating AI into Platform Writing Tasks? Not So Fast” (Mor Naaman, Cornell Tech)

13:30
Talk Two: “AI-generated stories: the nostalgia of large language models” (Jill Walker Rettberg, Center for Digital Narrative)

13:45
Talk Three: “Slow AI: When the Journey is the Destination” (Ingmar Weber, University of Saarland)

14:00
Moderated Q&A by Erik Knudsen (MediaFutures & UiB)

14:15
Coffee & Cake Break

Session 3: Building Trust: Personalisation, Engagement & Misinformation

14:35
Talk One: “Beyond facts: Messaging strategies to counter health misinformation” (Daniel Catalán Matamoros, UC3M MediaLab)

14:50
Talk Two: “Conversational and Understandable News” (Bart Goethals, Froomle, University of Antwerp)

15:05
Talk Three: “AI DAY at ORF; Where Technology Meets Content” (Stefan Kollinger, ORF)

15:20
Moderated Q&A by Lilja Øvrelid (MediaFutures & UiO)

15:35
Coffee Break

Panel Session: Inside the Newsroom: Norwegian Media’s AI Journey

15:55
Company Pitches: Magnus Aabech (DN Group), Chris R. Hermansen (TV2), Jan Stian Vold (Bergens Tidende), Erik Bonesvoll (Amedia), Victorina Demirel (Schibsted)

16:10
Moderated Debate by Morten Langfeldt Dahlback (Faktisk.no)

16:40
Refreshment Break

Demo & Poster Session

16:55
MediaFutures’ Gaze-Tracking Project: Yuki Onishi (MediaFutures), Nataliya Nymo (VIZRT) & Snorre Alvsvåg (TV2)

17:05
MediaFutures’ AI Video Editor Project: Adane Tarekegn (MediaFutures) & Lubos Steskal (TV2)

17:10
Poster Pitches

17:30
Interactive Demos & Networking

18:30
Poster Awards

19:00
Conference Dinner

The Program is subject to change.

CONFERENCE DINNER

Location: Roast Restaurant, Scandic Ørnen, top floor

19:00
Welcome Reception

19:30
First Course & Director’s Speech

20:00
Second Course & Show with Bergen Improteater

20:30
Third Course & Live music with Raa Duo

21:00
Party with DJDottir

SPEAKERS

Maxim Salnikov
Applied AI Engineer
Microsoft Norway
LinkedIn

Bio
Maxim Salnikov is a tech and cloud community enthusiast based in Oslo. With over two decades of experience as a web developer, he shares his extensive knowledge of the web platform, cloud computing, and AI by speaking at and providing training for developer events worldwide. By day, Maxim plays a crucial role in supporting the development of cloud and AI solutions within European companies, serving as the Senior Solution Engineer at Microsoft focusing on the AI-native developer tools & platforms. During evenings, he can be found running events for Norway’s largest web and cloud development communities. Maxim is passionate about exploring and experimenting with Generative AI possibilities, including AI-assisted development.

Talk Abstract
Title: AI Agents in Action: Transforming Work in Media & Entertainment
Abstract:
As the media and entertainment industry faces unprecedented change, organizations are turning to AI agents to boost productivity, address workforce capacity gaps, and unlock new value. This session explores how AI agents are reshaping roles, workflows, and leadership.

Daniel Catalán Matamoros
Professor & Director
UC3M MediaLab
LinkedIn

Bio
Daniel Catalán is a full professor of communication with nearly 20 years of experience in research and field work. He has held positions in major international organisations, including WHO, ECDC, and UNHCR, and currently directs the UC3M MediaLab. Author of over 200 publications with more than 4,000 citations (h-index = 34), he has led and participated in numerous national and international research projects. His work focuses on media effects, health misinformation, risk communication, and public understanding of digital technologies. In October 2025, he chaired the European Congress on Disinformation and Fact-Checking, which gathered more than 450 delegates from 58 countries.

Talk Abstract
Title: Beyond facts: Messaging strategies to counter health misinformation
Abstract:
Facts often fail to change perceptions or beliefs based on health misinformation. Our experimental research explores alternative messaging strategie, such as narrative storytelling and humour, to improve engagement, build trust, and foster dialogue with skeptical audiences. We examine how different ways of framing health messages affect credibility perceptions, emotional response, and behavioural intentions. Our results show that messages that feel personal and emotionally engaging make people more open and less defensive, and they work better than messages based only on data and statistics. The presentation will also share practical lessons for communicators and health organisations on how to create messages that are persuasive and trustworthy.

Zhixian Bao
AI Specialist
Google Norway
LinkedIn

Bio
Zhixian Bao works as an AI/ML specialist covering EMEA North at Google Cloud. Working in industry for 10 years, she is driven by a passion for using technology to empower both individuals and organizations to solve complex business challenges and create values.

Talk Abstract
Title: Multimodal AI Agents in the Media Industry
Abstract:
The session will explore the emerging role of Multimodality AI Agents, marking a critical shift in artificial intelligence from efficiency tools to drivers of innovation. The industry anticipates a transition where AI agents move beyond simple output generation to autonomous action. These advanced systems will leverage deep contextual understanding, real-time information access, and diverse modalities. The future trajectory of this technology points toward sophisticated multi-agent ecosystems capable of complex reasoning and tool utilization.

Bart Goethals
Computer Science Prof. & CEO at Froomle
University of Antwerp
LinkedIn

Bio
Bart Goethals is full professor at the Department of Computer Science of the University of Antwerp in Belgium where he leads the Adrem Data Lab, which performs fundamental research on artificial intelligence and data science.
He is founder and CEO of Froomle, a university spin-off company that provides a Recommender Systems Platform to the News and Media industry.
His primary research interests are the study of data mining and recommender systems. He received several awards for his theoretical studies on frequent itemset mining. He was general chair of IEEE ICDM 2012 and program chair of ECML PKDD 2008, and SIAM DM 2010 and will be program chair of ACM RecSys 2026.
He has served as general chair of the ECML PKDD Steering Committee, action editor of the Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery journal, and associate editor of the ACM Transactions on Recommender Systems, IEEE Transactions of Knowledge and Data Engineering, the Knowledge and Information Systems journal, and Recommender Systems Section Editor of Frontiers on Big Data, and he was Editor-in-Chief of the ACM SIGKDD Explorations newsletter.

Talk Abstract
Title: Conversational and Understandable News
Abstract:
In this talk, I present Froomle Voice, a personalised conversational news assistant that delivers news tailored to individual interests, and our recent work on making recommendations understandable — to increase transparency, user trust, and editorial oversight. The presentation will demonstrate these technologies and discuss their implications for responsible AI in the media sector.

Ingmar Weber
Alexander von Humboldt Professor
Saarland University
LinkedIn

Bio
Ingmar Weber is an Alexander von Humboldt Professor for AI and Chair for Societal Computing at Saarland University. His work looks at how data and AI can be used to understand and support social development. Previously, he held positions at the Qatar Computing Research Institute, Yahoo Research Barcelona, and the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). He is among the 2% of most cited researchers and is currently leading a EUR 29M initiative to use novel data sources to measure societal phenomena and to support timely decision making.

Talk Abstract
Title: Slow AI: When the Journey is the Destination
Abstract: A common software design mantra is “don’t make the user think”. Using software should be effortless and help get the user’s job done as quickly as possible. While this is often desirable, this efficiency-first approach can be detrimental for democracies where engagement with societal discussions, rather than just ticking a box should be the goal. In our group, we explore how “slow AI” could be used to make people think more, not less. Examples range from using LLMs for informing voters during elections, to a debate-yourself setup to promote tolerance.

Victorina Demirel
Data & AI Activation and Governance Lead
Schibsted New Media
LinkedIn

Bio
Victorina works at the intersection of data, AI, and strategy at Schibsted, one of the Nordics’ leading media groups. She focuses on how media can harness AI responsibly through strong governance and strategic collaboration, ensuring user trust and the sustainability of independent journalism. Victorina’s work centers on redefining how trusted media engage audiences and navigate the uncertainty that characterizes today’s rapidly evolving information landscape.

Talk Abstract
Title: At the Crossroads of AI and Journalism: Competing, Collaborating, and Co-Creating the Future of Media
Abstract:As generative AI reshapes how information is created, distributed, and consumed, media companies stand at a defining crossroads. On one side, big tech platforms—OpenAI, Google, and others—are rapidly changing audience behavior and diverting traffic. On the other, they represent potential allies in building frameworks that safeguard independent journalism and empower users with trustworthy information.
In this talk, I will explore how we, as a modern media company, navigate this tension between competition and collaboration. How can we shape the rules of engagement to ensure media’s continued relevance and resilience in the age of AI? And how do we reimagine our role—not just as content providers, but as active co-creators of an information ecosystem where truth, trust, and technology can coexist?

Mor Naaman
Professor & Associate Dean
Cornell Tech
LinkedIn

Bio
I am the Don and Mibs Follett professor of Information Science at Cornell Tech where I lead the Social Technologies research group and serve as the associate dean for faculty affairs. Previously, I was an assistant professor at Rutgers SC&I, led a research team at Yahoo! Research Berkeley, and got a PhD from Stanford. Before all that, I played professional basketball in Israel. I sometimes consult or even co-found startups.
My research focus is on topics related to Technology, Media and Democracy, and in particular the trustworthiness of our information ecosystem. We use a wide range of tools—from machine learning, to computational social science, to online experiments, to qualitative methods—to understand and try to address these challenges, with an increasing focus on the impact of AI-mediated communication. Our sponsors over the years included, among others, Yahoo, Google, Facebook and the National Science Foundation.

Talk Abstract
Title: Integrating AI into Platform Writing Tasks? Not So Fast
Abstract:
Online platforms increasingly integrate LLM-based writing tools, raising questions about GenAI’s impact on individuals’ content production and outcomes. In this project, we had a unique opportunity to measure the impact of such tool introduced by Change.org, an online petition platform. The results provide causal evidence that in-platform AI writing tools can profoundly reshape online content, but the tools practical utility for improving desired outcomes may be less beneficial than anticipated, and they introduce unintended consequences like content homogenization. This finding adds to a growing body of work showing the potential impact of AI-mediation communication on media.

Jill Walker Rettberg
Professor & Co-Director
Center for Digital Narrative
LinkedIn

Bio
Jill Walker Rettberg is Professor of Digital Culture and Co-Director of the Center for Digital Narrative at the University of Bergen. She leads the project AI STORIES: Narrative Archetypes of Artificial Intelligence, which is funded by an ERC Advanced Grant from the European Research Council. Jill’s books include Machine Vision: How Algorithms are Changing the Way We See the World (Polity 2023) and Seeing Ourselves Through Technology: How We Use Selfies, Blogs and Wearable Devices to See and Shape Ourselves (2014). She is currently a member of an expert committee for Teknologirådet’s report on artificial intimacy, and is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters and of the Norwegian Academy of Technological Sciences.

Talk Abstract
Title: AI-generated stories: the nostalgia of large language models
Abstract: What are the dominant narratives of generative AI, and what is at stake in their circulation? The AI STORIES project starts from the hypothesis that LLMs replicate and perhaps increase certain narrative patterns, which could mean that we lose diversity in storytelling. Research so far suggests this is true – the thousands of AI-generated stories we have analysed in the AI STORIES project emphasise stability and nostalgia, telling remarkably similar stories of threatened communities saved by reconnecting with heritage. LLMs also excel at simile and at affirmation, generating additive texts – more and more and more – rather than critical analysis. What does this mean for media, journalism and research?

Stefan Kollinger
Chief Innovation Officer
ORF
LinkedIn

Bio
Stefan Kollinger is an experienced professional in the field of media technology and digitalization, currently serving as the Chief Innovation Officer at ORF. In this role Stefan focuses on leading strategic initiatives from AI to Smart Producing to promote technological innovations and integrate digital solutions into the company’s existing operational processes. His work involves close collaboration with various departments to ensure that ORF remains at the forefront of digital transformation and efficiently uses the latest technologies to enhance program quality and reach.

Talk Abstract
Title: AI DAY at ORF; Where Technology Meets Content
Abstract:
At the Media Futures event, Stefan Kollinger will present strategic action fields and emerging opportunities for integrating artificial intelligence into content creation, production, and distribution at ORF. His talk explores how AI can drive innovation, enhance storytelling, and open new pathways for public media in a rapidly evolving digital ecosystem where technology and creativity meet to shape the future.

Snorre Alvsvåg
Backend Developer
TV2
LinkedIn

Lubos Steskal
Strategic AI Advisor
TV2
LinkedIn

Nataliya Nymo
Senior UX Designer
Vizrt
LinkedIn

Yuki Onishi
Researcher
MediaFutures
LinkedIn

Adane Tarekegn
Researcher
MediaFutures
LinkedIn

Morten Langfeldt Dahlback
Head of Innovation & Tech
Faktisk.no
LinkedIn

PANEL SESSION

Jan Stian Vold
Utviklingsredaktør
Bergens Tidende
LinkedIn

Erik Bonesvoll
Utviklingsredaktør
Amedia
LinkedIn

Magnus Aabech
Utviklingsredaktør
DN Media Group
LinkedIn

Chris Ronald Hermansen
Head of Editorial AI
TV2
LinkedIn

Victorina Demirel
Data & AI Activation and Governance Lead
Schibsted New Media
LinkedIn

WELCOMING NOTE

Lars Nyre
Professor & Deputy Leader
Infomedia, UiB
LinkedIn

Christian Birkeland
Chief Digital Officer
TV2
LinkedIn

Christoph Trattner
Professor & Director
MediaFutures
LinkedIn

Synnøve Kristine Nepstad Bendixsen
Dean SV-Faculty
UiB
LinkedIn

MODERATION

Christopher Senf
Innovation Coordinator
MediaFutures & UiB
LinkedIn

Anastasiia Klimashevskaia
Researcher
MediaFutures & UiB
LinkedIn

Alain Starke
Assistant Professor
MediaFutures & UvA
LinkedIn

DEMOS

Name
Title

Professor Andreas L. Opdahl & Øyvind Skjervheim
Demokratibasen: Data-Driven Democracy in Action

Dr. Yuki Onishi
Gaze Tracking Project with TV2 and Vizrt

Tobias Jovall Wessel
Verified Satirical Reframing: AI Reframing with Fact-Checking as a Tool for Next-Generation Journalism

Vegard Erlend Bolstad
Interactive Podcast Project: SuperPods

POSTERS

Tobias Jovall Wessel
Using Large Language Models to ‘Lighten the Mood’:Satirically Reframing News Recommendations to Reduce News Avoidance

Mapalo Kayeyi
Still More of The Same: A Longitudinal Evaluation on Ceiling Effects in a New Recommender System

Halvor Nedrebø
Enriching User Recommendation Experience Through Incorporation of Sequential Recommendation

Olav Gangenes
Analysis of User Interactions with a Personalized News Recommender System

Marlene Holzleitner, Dietmar Jannach
Controlled Personalization in Legacy Media Online Services: A Case Study in News Recommendation

Adane Tarekegn
Automated News Clip Generation via Robust Video Summarization

Peter Røysland Aarnes
Numerical Perturbations to Probe Language Models for Veracity Prediction

Bilal Mahmood
LLM-Powered Tool to Support Editors & Journalists Select Related News Articles

Vegard Steinhaug Brevik
A Hybrid Approach to Mitigate Popularity Bias in Recommender Systems

Jeng Jia-Hua
The role of GPT as an adaptive technology in climate change journalism

Yuki Onishi
Designing User-centric TV Production Control Rooms: from Eye-gaze to Understanding Decision-making.

Vegard Erlend Bolstad
SuperPods

Khadiga Seddik
Can style personalization, rather than political personalization, increase engagement with diverse political news?

Jiajing Wan
Personalizing News Headlines with Retrieval-Augmented Generation

Yelyzaveta Lysova
When AI Becomes a Chef: Leveraging LLMs to Generate and Promote Healthy Recipes on Online News Platforms

Svenja Lys Forstner
Reducing selective news avoidance of young audiences with personalized content adaptations and explanations

LOCATION

Scandic Ørnen is located at Lars Hilles Gate 18, right next to the main bus terminal.The closest public transport stop is “Bergen Busstasjon”, the main bus terminal.

UiB AI #17 Open Artificial Intelligence
2025-12-04 10:00 - 12:00
This UiB AI seminar is organized by the Faculty of Law and raises the question: Can AI models be open in the same way as open-source software, and should they be?
Open artificial intelligence refers to AI systems whose underlying programs and infrastructure, training data, model architecture, and model weights are wholly or partly openly available, allowing anyone to study, modify, and redistribute them. Large models such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini offer access to their models, but this access is limited to using the model. Other actors, such as Meta’s Llama and the Chinese model DeepSeek, present themselves as open, but in reality provide only access to model weights and the ability to run the model locally. Their use is also subject to license terms that restrict both further distribution and commercial use.
But what does it actually mean for an AI model to be open? Can there be limitations on the use of open AI models? And should such models really be open, given that openness may also make misuse easier?
The seminar will be streamed and recorded and given in Norwegian.
PROGRAM:
10:00 Coffee/tea and mingling
10:15–11:30 Presentations

Torger Kielland, Professor at the Faculty of Law

Pål Grønås Drange, Associate Professor at the Department of Informatics, Faculty of Science and Technology

11:30 Light lunch and mingling

News experience: Understanding why and how audiences interact with news beyond audience metrics
2025-12-09 09:15 - 14:30 | Ulrike Pihls Hus, Ulrikes aula, Professor Keysers gate 1, Bergen, Norway
We are pleased to invite you to the trial lecture and public defence of Marianne Borchgrevink-Brækhus, PhD candidate at SFI MediaFutures.
Date: 9 DecemberVenue: Ulrikes Aula, Ulrike Pihls hus
Time: The trial lecture starts at 09:15 and the defense begins at 10:30.
PhD Thesis:News experience: Understanding why and how audiences interact with news beyond audience metrics
Thesis Summary:
This thesis explores how we can understand news use as experience. While audiences have become increasingly central to professional journalism and journalism studies, understandings of audience practices and behaviors are predominantly shaped by digital trace data. Yet, despite this growing attention to audiences, news practitioners and scholars continue to talk more about audiences than with them. As a result, our knowledge about people’s interactions with news, and what these practices actually mean, remains limited. Against this backdrop, I approach news use as experience. I ask how we can further a more nuanced understanding of why and how audiences use news, starting from the vantage point of the audience.
To address these questions, I employ a multi-method research design, combining recurring interviews and media diaries, supplemented with video-ethnography and data donations. Drawing on the empirical insights provided by this multi-method approach, I refine the concept of news experience, emphasizing the importance of contextualizing understandings of news use within people’s everyday lives. By studying news use from an audience-centric perspective – bridging traditional qualitative methods with innovative digital ethnographic approaches across different media formats and platforms – I identify different experiences with news that both shape people’s practices and behaviors.
The empirical material is analyzed through four articles. The first article explores why young adults are reluctant to subscribe to digital news. I do this by analyzing experiences of young non-subscribers. The article provides insights into their considerations of why they do not subscribe as well as how they maneuver around paid news content. The second article offers a conceptualization of media experience, demonstrating how this concept is well-attuned to grasp the ingrained position and meaning media hold in people’s lives. Applying conceptual principles from the second article, the third article refines news experience as an analytical lens to understanding why and how people interact with news in everyday life, empirically grounded in six distinct forms of experience shaping people’s practices. Finally, the fourth article critically assesses the metric of “time spent” by analyzing how people navigate when reading news online, and how short digital news practices relate to meaningful experiences with news.
By talking with people instead of about them, this thesis critically assesses longstanding assumptions and misconceptions about audiences and their (digital) behaviors at a time when VI audience metrics have become integral to professional journalism and journalism studies. While I situate my research in relation to the audience turn in journalism research, this thesis contributes to the existing literature by detailing methodological and epistemological implications of studying news use as experience. In doing so, my research recognizes the lived, contextual dimensions of everyday life that ultimately give shape and meaning to people’s news practices: it demonstrates how audiences’ behaviors are formed not merely by perceptions of the news content itself, but also by embodied, material, and technological dimensions; the spatial, temporal, and social contexts in which it unfolds; and by their identities and previous knowledge. As such, the thesis explicates how news use can result from conscious and explicit, as well as unconscious and tacit practices and behaviors. I therefore argue that digital trace data – although relevant for identifying patterns and trends – cannot be applied as proxies for people’s interests or preferences. These insights are not only relevant from a societal perspective and to the field of journalism studies to inform more balanced assessments of news use in digital societies, but also in professional terms as media organizations justify their policies and financial investments on the basis of such metrics.
Opponents:

Professor Jannie Møller Hartley, The Department of Communication and Arts, Roskilde University
Professor Marcel Broersma, Centre for Media and Journalism Studies, University of Groningen

Leader of committee:
Professor Dag Elgesem, Department of Information Science and Media Studies, University of Bergen.
Chair of the defense:
Professor Leif Ove Larsen, Department of Information Science and Media Studies, University of Bergen.
