MediaFutures

AI anno 2030: In the Public Interest?
2025-03-07 09:30 - 15:00 (Europe/Oslo) | Universitetsaulaen, Muséplassen 3
UiB AI is collaborating with NORA on a CuttingEdgeAI seminar in the University Aula in Bergen. The idea behind the seminar is to bring together some of the foremost AI researchers in Norway to discuss where we stand in terms of research, which areas Norway has the opportunity to make its mark on and what might happen on the AI front in the future. Where will the research front be in different branches of artificial intelligence in five years’ time? And does AI represent the public interest, for example when it comes to democracy, labour, welfare, the environment and culture? The seminar is mostly in Norwegian.

The seminar will be streamed, and the recording will be available through a link.
Program:
09:00 Arrival and light refreshments09:30 Welcome by Pro-Rector Pinar Heggernes, Pro-Rector at UiB and Chair of the UiB AI Steering Group
Part 1: Where is the research front in various branches of artificial intelligence headed?
09:40 AI research in Norway in 2025: Anne Kjersti Fahlvik, Director of Innovation in Business and the Public Sector, Research Council of Norway
10:00 Arnoldo Frigessi, Professor and Director of the Center of Excellence (SFF) Integreat, UiO10:15 Jill Walker Rettberg, Professor and Deputy Director of the Center of Excellence for Digital Narratives, UiB
10:30 Coffee break
11:00 Robert Jenssen, Professor and Director of the Center for Research-based Innovation (SFI) Visual Intelligence, UiT – The Arctic University of Norway11:15 Panel discussion with Anne Kjersti, Arnoldo, Jill, and Robert, moderated by Pinar Heggernes, Pro-Rector, UiB
11:45 Lunch
Part 2: Where does Norway have particular strengths in AI research?
12:30 AI at NAV – What are we doing, and what are we wondering about?Jon Vegard Sparre, AI Lead at NAV
12:45 Heri Ramampiaro, Professor and Head of the Department of Computer Science, NTNU13:00 Marija Slavkovik, Professor and Head of the Department of Information Science and Media Studies, UiB
13:15 Coffee break
13:45 AI and regulation: From Norwegian marketing to research qualityMalcolm Langford, Professor at the Department of Public and International Law, UiO
14:00 Panel discussion with Jon Vegard, Heri, Marija, and Malcolm, moderated by Klas Pettersen, CEO of NORA
14:30 Food and networking15:00 Farewell
Moderator for the day: Dag Stenvoll, Coordinator for UiB AI

Opphavsrett for journalister – Hva du må vite om bruk og deling av innhold?
2025-03-06 12:00 - 17:00 | Media City Bergen, Medielaben i 9. etasje, tårn 3
Hva kan du bruke fritt, og hva krever tillatelse? Hva gjelder for lenking, embedding og bruk av innhold fra sosiale medier? Hvordan påvirker kunstig intelligens opphavsretten?
Bli med på en hands-on workshop med advokat Jon Wessel-Aas, en av Norges fremste eksperter på medierett. Her får du konkrete svar på de viktigste spørsmålene om opphavsrett – skreddersydd for journalister.

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

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.

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.

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.

Bias in Hate Speech Detection: Challenges and Solutions
2024-12-12 11:15 - 12:00 | SFI MediaFutures, MCB
SFI MediaFutures invites to a seminar on bias in hate speech detection hold by Debora Nozza, on 12 of December in our office in Bergen.
Abstract:
Online hate speech is on the rise, often leading to offline harm. While NLP methods, including LLMs, offer tools for detection, fine-tuning these models can introduce severe unintended bias—performing inconsistently across comments involving specific identity terms (e.g., gay, Muslim, woman). This talk explores the risks of deploying off-the-shelf classifiers, methods for measuring and mitigating bias, and the ongoing challenge of balancing effective hate speech detection with fairness in online spaces.
Bio:
Debora Nozza is an Assistant Professor in Computing Sciences at Bocconi University. Her research interests mainly focus on Natural Language Processing, specifically on the detection and counter-acting of hate speech and algorithmic bias on Social Media data in multilingual context. She was recently awarded a €1.5m ERC Starting Grant project 2023 for research on personalized and subjective approaches to Natural Language Processing.
The event is free of charge.
If you want to join online, please open the following link: https://uib.zoom.us/j/64083511296?pwd=[REDACTED]

The Human Quotient for Better AI Systems
2024-12-10 11:00 - 12:00 | MediaFutures, 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.

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

UiB AI #12: Aligning AI with Human Values. Challenges and Solutions
2024-11-29 10:00 - 15:00 | Storsalen, Nygårdsgaten 5, first floor
The event aims to bring together experts, researchers, and industry professionals to explore, discuss, and advance our understanding of the challenges and solutions related to aligning artificial intelligence systems with human values and goals.
The objectives and expected outcomes of this seminar are as follows:
– Participants will gain a deeper understanding of the challenges associated with AI alignment, including biases, interpretability, and value misalignment.
– The workshop will facilitate interactive discussions to develop concrete solutions and strategies for addressing AI alignment challenges.
– Participants will have the opportunity to network with leading experts and build connections that can lead to ongoing collaborations and partnerships
This event is a collaboration between Universitetsfondet and UiB AI.
Programme:
09:00-09:30: Registration and coffee
09:30-09:40: Introduction by moderator Samia Touileb, Department of Information Science and Media Studies at University of Bergen
09:40-10:15: How can we prevent LLMs from behaving badly? Jan Broersen, Professor at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Utrecht University
10:15-10:50: Value aware AI. Nardine Osman, Tenured Scientist at the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (IIIA), Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) (presentation by Zoom)
10:50-11:05: Coffee break
11:05-11:40: AI alignment of LLMs: a simple case study on detecting deceptive designs. Davide Liga, Post. Doc. at the Faculty of Science, Technology and Medicine, Université de Luxembourg
11:40-12:15: Human Interactions and their Implications for Ethical and Responsible Robotics and AI. Dr. Emily C. Collins, Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw Fellow at the Department of Computer Science, The University of Manchester.
12:15-12:45: Lunch (included)
12:45-13:20: Towards a Critical Political Economy of Generative AI. Vinit Ravishankar, Independent researcher with a PhD in multilingual language technology
13:20-13:55: Enabling Responsible AI with Humans. Nadin Kokciyan, Director of the Human-Centered AI Lab (CHAI Lab) at the University of Edinburgh
13:55-1410: Coffee break
14:10-14:45: News in AI age: alignment with editorial values and ethics. Anastasiia Klimashevskaia, PhD candidate, MediaFutures: Research Centre for Responsible Media Technology & Innovation
14:45-15:20: Machine ethics and alignment. Marija Slavkovik, Professor at Department of Information Science and Media Studies at the University of Bergen
15:20-15:40: Wrap up and discussions

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

Annual Meeting 2024
2024-11-14 09:45 - 2024-11-15 15:15 | 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

Pixar Animations Studios from film to streaming: What are the lessons?
2024-10-31 14:00 - 15:00 | Media Lab, 9th floor, tower 3, Media City Bergen
The Media Cluster in Bergen welcomes you to the lecture “Studios from film to streaming: What are the lessons?” by Pixar’s Bill Wise on October 31st at 14:00.
Join Bill Wise, a veteran of Pixar Animation Studios, as he shares his wealth of experience from almost three decades of storytelling, visual effects, and technical leadership. Having contributed to iconic films like Toy Story, The Incredibles, and WALL-E, and recently leading projects for Pixar/Disney+, Bill provides a behind-the-scenes look at Pixar’s evolution from blockbuster films to streaming platforms.
In this insightful session, Bill will explore the challenges and innovations Pixar faced as it transitioned into the world of streaming. He’ll discuss the impact of this shift on production pipelines, storytelling techniques, and the creative process, offering lessons learned from his time as a Supervising Technical Director and Visual Effects Supervisor. Bill’s journey includes working on Oscar-winning films like For the Birds and Brave, and he will offer key takeaways from his recent projects for Disney+, including his work on visualizing and producing content for this new era.
Whether you’re a fan of Pixar or interested in the future of animation and streaming, this session promises a fascinating look at how one of the world’s most beloved studios adapted to the changing media landscape

Future Week 2024
2024-09-25 08:00 - 2024-09-27 17:00 | Media City Bergen, Atrium
Future Week is an annual conference on media technology and editorial innovation. The conference focuses on the intersection of new technology and journalism.
With around 300 participants, Future Week is an informal, boutique conference where editorial teams meet product developers and media technologists. We feature engaging speakers from newsrooms and media technology companies, both from Norway and from our international network.
Key topics for 2024:Generative AINewsroom innovationProduct developmentDisinformationVisual storytellingProduct management
Speakers:

Siv Juvik Tveitnes (Schibsted)
Andy Parsons (Adobe)
Ryan Broderick (Garbage Day)
Raquel Vazquez Llorente (Witness)
Pete Mathias (Alumni Ventures)
Bo Bergstedt (TV 2 Denmark)
Kjersti Løken Stavrum (Tinius Trust)
Markus Aarstad (Flighty)
Jan Stian Vold (Schibsted)
Håkon Espeland (Muybridge)
Pål Nedregotten (NRK)
Christian Birkeland (TV 2)
Adde Granberg (SVT)
Daniel Vestergaard (DR)
Tessa Sproule (CBC)
Markus Rask Jensen (Amedia)
David Thompson (DPP)

More speakers to be announced!

Day 1: September 25, 2024
09:00 – WelcomeHost Chris Black, Global Head of Brand & Communications at Vizrt

09:05 – The Future of Schibsted MediaSiv Juvik Tveitnes, CEO of Schibsted MediaSiv Juvik Tveitnes is the CEO of the brand new Schibsted Media, arguably one of the most influential news media companies in Europe. Where does she aim to take Schibsted Media in the coming years, and how will the new Schibsted Media grow? Tveitnes will share her vision of how Schibsted Media will develop, her thoughts on the profitability of news media, and what the future holds for the news media ecosystem. Join us for the future of Schibsted Media!

09:40 – Capturing Magic by Turning Cameras into SoftwareHåkon Espeland, CEO at MuybridgeJoin us for this session where Håkon Espeland gives us an insight into how Muybridge is turning cameras into software. We will explore how their technology can revolutionize media production, storytelling, and viewer engagement. Don’t miss this deep dive into how turning cameras into software will influence broadcast, sports, and digital communication in the next era of imaging.

10:00 – What an Editor Learned from Moving to the Product Department and Back AgainJan Stian Vold, Managing Editor and Product DeveloperJan Stian Vold is the managing editor who became a product developer, before going back to the newsroom as an editor again. What did he learn from working in these two different worlds? What are the best aspects of how editorial teams work, versus how product teams work? What are the key differences, and what can the two learn from each other? Last but not least: What do both cultures need to change to improve?

10:20 – Coffee Break

10:50 – Future Beat: The Next Innovation FrontierPete Mathias, Venture Capitalist
Generative AI is not merely a continuation of existing technology, it is a wholly new technological paradigm. What does that mean, and where will generative AI take us? Pete Mathias has substantial venture capital and startup experience, and will share what venture capitalists look for when they assess this technology and attempt to think about the future for media tech globally.

11:25 – How to Make a Product that People LoveMarkus Aarstad, Founder of FlightyHow do you make a product that both users and Apple love? Markus Aarstad made Flighty, an app that lets you track your flight seamlessly, suggesting options if there are delays. The app has been showcased at Apple’s own product launch, won Apple’s Design Awards and was a finalist for app of the year. It is also a smash hit among users of course. Markus Aarstad will get into the nuts and bolts of developing a successful product and share his best advice on how to make a product that people love.

11:45 – Lunch Break

12:45 – C2PA Content Credentials: the Global Movement Toward Transparency and TrustAndy Parsons, Sr. Director, Content Authenticity Initiative at Adobe
As media producers and consumers, we are living in unprecedented times. Incredible generative tools are fueling an ecosystem of distrust and confusion. Since 2021, the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA) has been working to develop a technology standard for verifiable, trustworthy content provenance, called Content Credentials. Now, to bring the standard into widespread use, it will be the work of content creators, news organizations, publishers, tool makers, and hardware manufacturers to come together and deploy Content Credentials. This talk will trace the journey to date and the path forward, focusing on practical considerations and painting a picture of a future in which authentic content stands out.

13:20 – Navigating the Future: Top Five Media Industry TrendsDavid Thomson, DPP
In its Demand vs Supply reports, the DPP engages with media and entertainment businesses to identify key industry needs and analyses how well these demands are being met by vendors. David Thomson will be fresh from producing the fourth report in the series at IBC 2024 and will discuss what he sees as the five biggest media industry trends.

13:45 – Coffee Break

14:15 – How sensor data enables both breaking news and investigative reportingWith Ketil Moland Olsen and friends

14:45 – CTO Panel: What Are the CTOs Looking For?Daniel Vestergaard (DR), Pål Nedregotten (NRK), Adde Granberg (SVT), Christian Birkeland (TV 2), hosted by Hilde Sandvik
Join us for the first-ever summit of Chief Technology Officers from Nordic broadcasters at Future Week. They will share their needs, frustrations, and predictions when it comes to media technology. In this session, you will hear the CTOs from NRK, TV 2, SVT, and DR discuss the big topics of our time. Is it better to build in-house than to buy off the shelf? Will AI really make everything easier? What is the biggest challenge short-term, and what demands are they anticipating in the near future? And which broadcast technology are they most excited about, right now?

15:30 – End of Day 1

Day 2: September 26, 2024
09:00 – WelcomeHost Chris Black, Global Head of Brand & Communications at Vizrt

09:05 – TBA

09:40 – Driving Innovation the Amedia WayMarkus Rask Jensen, Director of News at Amedia
How do you innovate and serve 109 different newsrooms, some with as few as two employees? In this session, you will learn about Amedia’s unique way of product development, both when it comes to developing for end-users and for tools to be used in the newsroom. Markus Rask Jensen will tell us about Amedia’s data strategy, how they use hyperlocal data and how they make a range of new AI tools available for a very diverse set of newsrooms.

10:00 – Anne Jacobsen Memorial Award Presentation

10:10 – Coffee Break

10:40 – Interview with AJM Award WinnerKjersti Løken Stavrum and award winner

11:05 – The AI Frontier: Dreams and Dangers AheadBo Bergstedt, Enterprise Architect (AI) at TV2 DenmarkIt’s been two hectic years since OpenAI began releasing generative AI products to the public, sparking an AI arms race. The consequences vary depending on who you ask: Some fear the impact of increasingly powerful models, while others see it as an opportunity for humanity to reset and restart. Join Bo Bergstedt as he explores the progress made since the concept of «machines that think» entered the mainstream, and examines how we are steadily advancing toward both the dreams and fears surrounding this transformative technology. What will the rapid development of AI mean for the media industry, and what should you do to prepare for what is guaranteed to be a most interesting future?

11:40 – Lunch Break

12:40 – The Web Has Turned to Crap. Now What?Ryan Broderick, Author of Garbage DayThe web is broken and has been for quite some time. What used to be a fun playground, a common conversation and a place of inspiration is increasingly turning into… well… crap? How did we get here? And what now? To answer these questions, welcome Ryan Broderick, a guy who self-identifies as «extremely online». He has been exploring the quirks, turns and major shifts of the web over the last few years through his award-winning newsletter Garbage Day. What’s going to happen next? And should there not be a better internet than what we are stuck with now?

13:10 – How C2PA Will Reshape Our NewsroomsTessa Sproule, Director of Metadata and Information Management at CBC/Radio-CanadaC2PA is more than content credentials and can fundamentally change how newsrooms work. Tessa Sproule shares how CBC/Radio-Canada uses the implementation of C2PA as a springboard for rethinking and restructuring their entire newsroom and journalistic processes. The challenge is formidable: how does one prepare a whole newsroom for a boom in transparency, both in terms of workflow and best practices? You will learn how C2PA can be an important enabler for better journalistic processes.

13:40 – How we built the world of Alan WalkerKristian Berg, Creative Director at Apparat
Kristian will talk about the creation of World of Walker and how they built a worldwide fan community through various untraditional formats.

14:00 – Coffee Break

14:30 – The Disinformation Election: Truth and lies in the presidential campaignPanel: Hilmar Mjelde (HVL), Maria Amelie (Factiverse), TBA, Hosted by Vivi Stenberg

15:00 – TBA

Andy Parsons
Senior Director, Content Authenticity Initiative @ AdobeAndy Parsons is the Senior Director of Adobe’s Content Authenticity Initiative, leading the development of software and standards for digital provenance. With a background in software engineering, product design, and business strategy, Andy empowers creative professionals through innovative technology. He is known for his hands-on leadership and expertise in emerging technologies.
Raquel Vazquez Llorente
Head of Law & Policy, Technology Threats & Opportunities @ WITNESSRaquel is a lawyer at WITNESS, focusing on audiovisual media in conflict and human rights crises. She leads a team studying AI and deepfakes’ impact on media trust and tackles regulatory challenges. Previously, she helped build eyeWitness, a tool for authenticating audiovisual evidence. Admitted to the Madrid Bar, she holds degrees from LSE and Universidad Carlos III de Madrid

Bo Bergstedt
Enterprise Architect (AI) @ TV2 DenmarkBo Bergstedt, the Enterprise Architect (AI) at TV 2 Denmark, has a career focused on media product development. Formerly a Technology Strategist, he identifies technological trends and their impact on TV 2. Since 2018, Bo has led projects using Generative AI to create videos, images, and voices, and develops internal guidelines for its use. His expertise also covers blockchain, gamification, streaming, and the Metaverse, driving innovation at TV 2.
Siv Juvik Tveitnes
Konsernsjef @ Schibsted Media.Siv Juvik Tveitnes is the EVP of News Media and former COO of Schibsted Media. She chairs the boards of Aftonbladet and Svenska Dagbladet. Her previous roles include CEO of Bergens Tidende and Stavanger Aftenblad, and positions at Media Norge, Bergens Tidende AS, and Bekk Consulting AS. She holds a master’s in Business Administration from the University of Bath and a bachelor’s in Social Sciences from the University of Bergen
Håkon Espeland
Co-Founder & CEO @ MuybridgeHåkon Espeland is the Co-founder and CEO at Muybridge, a deep-tech company re-inventing the camera by turning them into software, on a mission to reimagine the future of storytelling. Håkon holds an M.Sc. in Cybernetics from NTNU, specialized in real-time embedded systems, and has, together with several of the Muybridge team members, created leading mission-critical systems within broadcasting
Markus Årstad
Founding Designer @ FlightyMarkus Aarstad is the designer of Flighty, a renowned flight tracking app for iOS. He is the only Norwegian to have won the prestigious Apple Design Award, and the Flighty app has also been a finalist for App of the Year. He is deeply engaged in the intersection of technology and human behavior.
Kjersti Løken Stavrum
CEO @ Tinius Trust.Kjersti Løken Stavrum is the jury leader for the Anne Jacobsen Memorial Prize. She has a background as a journalist and editor. Løken Stavrum is the CEO of Tinius Trust – the controlling owner of Schibsted ASA, has been the chairman of Norwegian PEN, and led the Freedom of Expression Commission in Norway. She has previously been the secretary general of the Norwegian Press Association, has an education in political science, and has a master’s degree in management.
Ryan Broderick
Author of the Webby-Award winning newsletter @ Garbage DayRyan Broderick is the author of the award-winning tech newsletter Garbage Day. Ryan has spent far too much time online, and is desperate for ways to turn that obsession into something useful.
Jan Stian Vold
Development Editor @ BT.Jan Stian Vold (47) is the Development Editor at Bergens Tidende. He has worked at BT his entire career, in various roles. For the past three years, he has focused on editorial product development.
Pete Mathias
Venture Capitalist @ Alumni VenturesPete Mathias is a Partner at Alumni Ventures, a leading venture fund. He has extensive international investing experience across the U.S., EU, and China, and was previously a Senior Director at Bertelsmann’s $1.5B+ venture arm. Pete began his venture career at 406 Ventures and was a founder in the Harvard Innovation Lab. He holds degrees from the University of Oxford (Distinction), Dartmouth College (MBA and A.B. magna cum laude), and Harvard University (MPA).

MediaFutures seminar
2024-09-20 11:00 - 12:00 | Online
Title: Facing disinformation in social media with focus on its social impact
The integration of social media into our daily lives has been both transformative and essential, offering numerous advantages in how we communicate, share information, and engage with the world. However, alongside these benefits comes a growing concern: the widespread dissemination of misinformation. This challenge not only distorts public perception but can also significantly influence critical societal events, such as elections and public health crises. In this talk, we will present research from the UGRITAIlab at the University of Granada, specifically in the field of fake news detection and analysis. Our research spans several key areas, with a particular emphasis on the social impact of misinformation. Central to this work is our DESINFOSCAN Framework, which includes a social impact module and a credibility analysis module.
The social impact module focuses on analyzing the influence of misinformation by utilizing advanced topic detection and argumentation techniques to examine social media discussions. Meanwhile, the credibility module uses word embeddings to identify credible individuals and those whose contributions are valuable to the discourse on specific topics across social networks. By addressing these issues, we aim to offer insights into how misinformation can be mitigated and how trustworthiness in social media interactions can be enhanced.
The seminar is digital only. The zoom link can be found below.
SPEAKER: José A. Díaz-García
J. Ángel Díaz-García, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Computer Science and AI at the University of Granada (UGR). He graduated as a Computer Engineer in 2016, receiving an award for outstanding academic performance. Subsequently, he ventured into the professional field as an SQL analyst at Asexor, gaining professional experience in the private sector. In 2017, he completed the qualifying master’s degree in Computer Engineering. During this period, José Ángel began to specialize in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI), leading him to pursue the master’s degree in Data Science at UGR, thereby consolidating his knowledge in AI. During this time, he made his first scientific contributions at international conferences as part of a research initiation scholarship for master’s students. After completing this second master’s degree, he participated as a data scientist in international projects at the Universities of Oviedo and Granada. In 2019, he was awarded an FPU scholarship from the Ministry, marking the beginning of his doctoral studies in the area of Natural Language Processing (NLP), which culminated in the defense of his thesis on October 27, 2023, with honors in international doctorate and CUM LAUDE. Throughout his research career, he has contributed to 4 publications (JCRD Q1, Q2) in the field of NLP and participated in 15 international and 4 national conferences. He has also collaborated on 6 projects, including NOFACEPS, of which he is the principal investigator, and two international projects, such as COPKIT, where he contributed with a significant unsupervised sentiment analysis method. José Ángel has completed research stays at the University of Lisbon with Professor Joao Paulo Carvalho and at Imperial College London, where he worked at the Data Science Institute with J. Amador Diaz-Lopez. As a result of the collaboration with Imperial College, a contribution was made to an international conference in the field of misinformation in networks. Additionally, the organization of a special session at a conference was initiated, and currently, this relationship continues with two publications under review.
Finally, it is worth highlighting the management and leadership skills demonstrated by José Ángel, which led to the acquisition of a research project at UGR, where he is the principal investigator, and which concluded with the publication of the NOFACE credibility analysis system in the journal Expert Systems With Applications (JCR Q1). He was also part of the organizing committee of the FQAS 2023 international conference and the program committee of the COMS2 international conference in India. He has organized special sessions at 3 international conferences, outreach workshops, and given interviews on radio and in the press.

UiB Innovation Festival: From research to change
2024-09-20 09:00 - 14:30 | Nygårdsgaten 5, Nordre Allmenning 3 at Læringsarenaen
You are invited to the UiB Innovation Festival that will take place on September 20th from 9 to 14:30 at Nygårdsgaten 5. The festival is your opportunity to engage with the broad spectrum of innovation emerging from our university, discuss how to balance the open science with protecting intellectual property, and reflect on how UiB can contribute to Vestland’s green transition. The event is a part of the InnovasjonsukenOPP and will be a meeting place for people from academia, businesses and public sector in the region.
One of the program’s highlights is the session on responsible research and innovation by Dr. Anne Blanchard, Researcher at the Centre for the Study of the Sciences and the Humanities, Faculty of Humanities:
“Was Oppenheimer a responsible scientist or not? Was he responsible for the impacts of his research on nuclear fission? In this session, I will focus on responsible research and innovation (RRI). What does it mean, to do research in a responsible way (without going as far as playing with weapons of mass destruction)? What do we need to pay attention to, in our everyday research practices? Everyone welcome!”

Registration to UiB Innovation Festival 2024 for employees and students
Registration to UiB Innovation Festival 2024 for participants outside UiB

We look forward to welcoming you to a day filled with inspiration, learning, and networking.
Programme:
09:00 – 09:30 Festival opening and keynote speech
“Building social impact at scale: experiments in arts, humanities and social science commercialisation at the University of Cambridge”
Dr Emma Salgård Cunha, Senior Associate Commercialisation Director, Cambridge Enterprise, University of Cambridge
09:30 – 10:15 Innovation relay: 8 pitches on different types of innovation at UiB
10:15 – 10:45 Coffee break and stands
10:45 – 11:15 Parallel sessions, first round:
Session 1 – How to balance publishing and protecting intellectual property (IPR)?
Session 2 – Student Innovation: resources and tools for success
Session 3 – Effective use of AI: crash course in prompt writing
11:15 – 12:15 Lunch and exhibitions
12:15 – 12:45 Parallel sessions, second round:
Session 1 – Do you work at UiB and have an innovative idea? Learn how to proceed and what resources are available to you
Session 2 – Mini-design sprint – innovation tool for quickly creating and testing new solutions
Session 3 – Responsible innovation – what is it and how to do it?
12:45 – 13:15 Coffee break and stands
13:15 – 13:55 Panel discussion: Innovation for green transition and UiB’s role in the region
13:55 – 14:30 Award Ceremony for UiB Idé 2024 with project presentations
Among the stands, in addition to inspiring innovation projects, you can have one-on-one consultations to:

Explore what patents filed in the world have cited your publications
Quickly scan your research project for innovation potential
See how to improve your visibility online

Most of the day will be in English, whilst the panel discussion and the UiB Ide Award will be in Norwegian.

Training workshop in Oslo: Accessibility in Digital Learning Resources
2024-09-16 08:00 - 2024-09-17 17:00 | oslo
Join our 2-Day training workshop on Accessibility in Digital Learning Resources! Are you passionate about making digital learning more interactive and accessible? Our upcoming workshop in Oslo, Norway, on Monday, September 16th, and Tuesday, September 17th, is the perfect opportunity for you!
Focus Areas:– Tools for enhancing interactivity and accessibility in linear media experiences.– Balancing AI personalization with privacy in accessible media.
Interactive Learning:– Learn practical skills and hands-on techniques to apply WCAG/WAD in real-life scenarios.– Engage in group work facilitated by leading experts and researchers.
Who Should Attend:– COST LEAD-ME Network Members: Most participants will be from our network, but new members are welcome!– PhD Students and Researchers: Especially those from psychology, computer science, and related fields.– Accessibility Experts and Practitioners: Gain insights from experienced professionals in the field.
Why Attend?– Hands-On Experience: Move beyond theory and gain practical knowledge you can apply immediately.– Expert Guidance: Work directly with top facilitators who are leaders in accessibility and interactivity.
The attendance will be restricted to 40 students in total (in-person and online). We can support up to 15 students traveling to Oslo, Norway (MSc, PhD students, and young researchers eligible for COST funding); this is funded by the LEAD-ME COST Action CA19142. The School also acceptsapplications from candidates with their own financial sources. All participants must fill out an application form, which includes a short CV and motivation letter. The Scientific Committee will classify students according to COST rules, including balancing career stage, gender, and countriesof work.
Application Deadline: August 20

CLOSED FOR APPLICATIONS

All costs will be reimbursed after the event according to COST Reimbursement Rules.
Reimbursement:
Students will have to sign the attendance for each day of the School, according to the COST regulations. Eligible trainees will be reimbursed by the LEAD-ME CA19142 COST Project. To be reimbursed, students should submit travel tickets reimbursement claims and carry out theirobligations which will be specified by the COST rules.
This seminar is organised and sponsored by SFI MediaFutures, LEAD-ME, Schibsted, NORCE and TV2 School.
Venues:Day 1, 16th Sept, will take place at Egmont in Nydalsveien 12A (stop: Nydalen):Day 2, 17th Sept, will take place at Schibsted in Akersgata 55 (stop: Stortinget or Oslo S):Early-bird gathering, 15th Sept: For those who arrive on Sunday evening, we suggest meeting up ata place offering both food and/or drinks. This place will be announced later.

Training workshop day-by-day:
Day 1 will focus on navigation and perception, including an introduction session, followed by user demonstrations. Four users will demonstrate how they navigate and perceive digital learning resources, representing different age groups. There will be smaller groups of five to seven PhDstudents at each demonstration “station”, based on using participants from Digjobb.no. After lunch,following WCAG principles, the focus will be on how to navigate and perceive a digital learning resource. Participants will work in a break-out group (10-14). There will be focus on eye-gazenavigation, one-button, two-button, braille, deaf. Complementary PhD-specializations will work together in each break-out group. Participants will learn how to interpret WCAG/WAD in relation to eye-gaze navigation, one-button, two-button, braille, deaf. There will be one facilitator per break-out group.
Day 2 will focus on understanding. It will start with making WCAG principle understandable, in relation to content and to accessibility challenges such as dyslexia, symbol users, cognitive challenges. Thereafter, four users will demonstrate how they use learning resources, representingdifferent age groups. Again, there will be five to seven PhD students on each demonstration “station” Using the Digjobb.no as partner. After lunch, there will be navigation break-out group 1 (10-14) How to interpret WCAG/WAD in relation to dyslexia, symbol users, cognitive challenges. DifferentPhD-specializations in every group. There will be none navigation break-out group 2 (10-14 persons). How to interpret WCAG/WAD in relation to dyslexia, symbol users, cognitive challenges. There will be different PhD-specializations in every group.

Day 1, 16. SepDay 2, 17. Sep

Day 1, 16. Sep 09.00–09.30 Introduction 09.30–10.15 Experts 10.30–11.30 User-café 11.30–12.30 Lunch 12.30–13.30 Navigat: how to 13.45–15.00 Navigat: how to cont. 15.00–16.00 Pitching with experts 16.00–17.00 Roof-top drinks if sunny 19.00–22.00 Social eve (venue tbd)

09.00–09.30 Introduction09.30–10.15 Experts10.30–11.30 User-café11.30–12.30 Lunch12.30–13.30 Navigat: break-out13.45–15.00 Navigat: break-out cont.15.00–16.00 Pitching with jury16.00–17.00 Wrap-up and mingling

More info on the experts, accomodation and program can be found in the pdf ADLM_Brochure_final_web

Personalisation Day
2024-09-16 08:00 - 2024-09-17 17:00 | Wallenberg Conference Center, Gothenburg, Sweden
We invite all researchers and practitioners in the Nordics to the second Nordic Personalisation day in Wallenberg Conference Center, Gothenburg. We aim on two days full of talks and discussions on ethics, responsibility in personalisation and recommender systems. There will also be plenty of time to meet peers both from industry and research and exchange ideas during the conference during coffee breaks, lunch and after-workshop drinks.
The event starts after lunch on the 16th and ends on the 17th at lunch time. We know there are many innovative academic and industrial labs and hope this workshop can be a step toward creating a Nordic community on this highly relevant topic.
Admittance is free of charge, but registration is required. Please follow the link below to find out more.
The event is funded by Meltzer, SFI MediaFutures and Swedish funding agencies.

Europe’s Digital Agenda: Is the AI Act the Final Act? In Search of Common Principles
2024-09-06 09:00 - 18:00 | Bergen Global, Jekteviksbakken 31, 5006 Bergen AND Zoom
Over the past five years the European Union legislature has passed a flurry of ambitious directives and regulations dealing with various aspects of Europe’s digital economy: the Digital Single Market (DSM) Directive (2019), the Open Data Directive (2019), the Data Governance Act (2022), the Digital Services Act (2022), the Digital Market Act (2022), the Data Act (2023) and the AI Act (2024).
While these legal instruments touch upon different legal domains, ranging from intellectual property law, freedom of government information and data protection to media regulation, competition law, and consumer protection, there is considerable overlap – and increasing confusion about their reach and scope, the new governance structures they establish, and their underlying policies.
It introduces a ban on high-risk AI technologies, establishes far reaching transparency measures, demands human oversight, prohibits misleading uses of AI, creates new supervisory authorities, and enhances protection of human creators against being “trained” by LLM’s.
This international conference – the first of its kind – searches for common principles and doctrines in Europe’s Digital Agenda, and queries what will be the EU’s next step – if any – in its regulatory adventure in the digital field. It will also compare Europe’s Digital Agenda to developments in the United States and look at the impact of the new European rules on enterprises in the ICT sector in Europe, particularly start-ups.
Programme
8.30-9.00 Registration and coffee
9.00-9.15 Opening (Dean Karl Harlad Søvig)
9.15-9.45 Introduction: Martin Husovec, LSE Law School
Session 1 Fostering the European Data Economy
9.45-10.05 Heather Broomfield, University of Oslo, Are We There Yet? The Legal Evolution of Public Sector Data Sharing
10.05-10.25 Lucie Antoine, LMU University, Munich, The Data Act: Fair access to data and new possibilities for data-driven innovation – or everything more difficult than before?
10.25-10.40 COFFEE BREAK
10.40-11.00 Bernt Hugenholtz, University of Amsterdam, Text and Data Mining in the DSM-directive
11.00-11.45 Panel discussion and Q&A
11.45-12.45 LUNCH BREAK
Session 2 Platform regulation
12.45-13.05 Torger Kielland, University of Bergen, Article 17 CDSM: Platform liability for copyrighted content – too much or not enough?
13.05-13.25 Benjamin Raue, University of Trier, The Digital Services Act: Liability exemptions in exchange for diligence obligations and public oversight
13.25-13.45 Alexander Iken, European Commission, Digital Markets Act
13.45-14.30 Panel discussion and Q&A
14.30-14.45 COFFEE BREAK
Session 3 Regulating AI
14.45-15.05 Alexander Peukert, Goethe University Frankfurt, The Meta-Regulation of AI through the AI Act
15.05- 15.25 Thomas Vinje, University of Bergen, AI and competition law
15.25-16.00 Pamela Samuelson, UC Berkeley, An American Perspective on AI Regulation
16.00-17.00 Panel discussion and Q&A
17.00 Ending

Organizing committee
Professor Torger Kielland, University of Bergen
Emeritus Professor Bernt Hugenholtz, University of Amsterdam
Assistant Professor Thomas Vinje, University of Bergen
Associate Professor Liliia Oprysk, University of Bergen

Advancing Image and Video Understanding Beyond Traditional Paradigms: Vocabulary-Free Classification and Zero-Shot Temporal Localization
2024-09-03 12:30 - 14:00 | Ulrike Pihls hus, Seminarrom 2B
The Department of Information Science and Media Studies and the I2S research group welcomes you to this seminar with Paolo Rota of University of Trento.
The rapid evolution of vision-language models is transforming the landscape of image and video understanding, going beyond traditional classification and localization paradigms. We will explore two recent methodologies that challenge the conventional reliance on predefined vocabularies and training data. The first part of the talk introduces the concept of Vocabulary-Free Image Classification (VIC), a novel approach that assigns classes to images without the constraints of a fixed vocabulary. We will delve into the challenges of operating within an unconstrained semantic space containing millions of concepts and present Category Search from External Databases (CaSED), a training-free method that leverages external vision-language databases for efficient and accurate classification. In the second part, we will shift focus to Test-Time Zero-Shot Temporal Action Localization (ZS-TAL), which tackles the problem of identifying and locating unseen actions in untrimmed videos without the need for annotated training data. We will introduce the Test-Time adaptation for Temporal Action Localization (T3AL) approach, which adapts a pre-trained Vision and Language Model (VLM) to perform action localization in a self-supervised manner, significantly improving generalization across diverse video domains. Finally we will show how LLMs can be used as a sort of orchestrator to solve research problems autonomously, through visual programming.
Paolo is an assistant professor at the Center for Mind and Brain (CIMeC) at the University of Trento. He received his Ph.D. from the same university and has worked as a postdoctoral Marie Curie fellow at TU Wien and as a postdoc at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia in Genoa. He also worked as an ML researcher at the ProM Facility in Rovereto. He has been an assistant professor at the University of Trento since 2019 and started his tenure track in 2022. His research interests are focused on image and video classification using Vision and Language.

AI Solutions for Local Journalism Challenges: A Design Thinking Approach and Beyond
2024-06-28 11:15 - 12:00 | Online
WP3 invites to a digital seminar on AI for local journalism. Speaker is the Postdoctoral Researcher Dr Reshmi G. Pillai from Vrije University Amsterdam.
Journalism has been transformed by technological advancements over the last two decades, causing significant economic disruption among other challenges. The emergence of Artificial Intelligence has accelerated this paradigm shift, presenting tremendous opportunities and equally profound challenges to news organizations worldwide. This transition poses a particular concern to regional and local media organizations, as they are often at increased risk of being at the disadvantaged end of the technological knowledge and adoption. Local journalism, however, remains a vital component of democratic societies, by voicing the issues and concerns from local communities, and contextualizing global/national news stories, thus engaging news audience better with collective discourses.
Our research investigates, in collaboration with a regional broadcaster in the Netherlands, how AI can best enhance journalistic processes, while maintaining the agency with the journalists. We conducted design thinking sprints with the journalists of the broadcaster, starting by identifying the challenges within the news-making process, and moving towards clearly defined problem statements and solution approaches. The talk also presents our further research motivated by these findings from the design thinking sprints. We outline a prototype to build a Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) system from information sources such as past news reports, to provide background information for an incoming news story. Also, addressing the problem of news content and headline optimization, we analyse the textual features, on a dataset of ~500k tweets, associated with audience engagement, for national and regional news media within the Netherlands, as pointers for generating engaging content.
This research is part of the consortium project ‘Towards Responsible AI for Local Journalism’ (link here) with researchers from Vrije University Amsterdam, University of Amsterdam, University of Groningen (the Netherlands), LMU Munich (Germany), and University of Stavanger (Norway).
Speaker: Dr Reshmi G. Pillai
Ms. Pillai focuses on the adoption and implementation of artificial intelligence techniques, specifically natural language processing in the context of local journalism. Her research interests are in analyzing text using natural language processing methods for a better understanding of behaviors and states of individuals and the society. Previously, she was a Lecturer at the Informatics Institute, University of Amsterdam, assisting in the Master’s program in Information Studies (Data Science track). She holds a PhD from the University of Wolverhampton for her thesis on the expressions of psychological stress in tweets.

You can join the meeting via zoom here.

Addressing the Next-Poster Problem: A Hybrid Recommender System for Streaming Platforms
2024-06-20 10:00 - 11:35 | Møterom 1 MCB
09:30 Pre-discussion (attendants: Mehdi Elahi, Benjamin Kille)
10:00 start explanation followed by thesis presentation (attendants: all)
Around 10:40 Interrogation (attendants: Alvsvåg, Mehdi Elahi, Benjamin Kille)
Around 11:15 Consultation between censors (attendants: Mehdi Elahi, Benjamin Kille)
Around 11:35: Results (attendants: all)
Title: Addressing the Next-Poster Problem: A Hybrid Recommender System for Streaming Platforms
Abstract:
Recommendation strategies in the Movie domain is varied, but has been shown to aid users in finding content they like. On video streaming-platforms such as TV 2 Play, the user is exposed to several different arenas where they can find something they would like to watch, be that the landing-page of the streaming site, or a suggestion for something more to watch after they concluded a movie or series. These are all areas where Recommender strategies can recommend something based on either the preferences of the user, or in the case of the concluded movie or series, something more to watch based on what they just watched. This latter aspects, being what I refer to as the next-poster problem in this thesis, is not a largely explored area of research, where previous actors have simply utilized the already established Collaborative Filtering (CF) model concerned with the user’s preferences without considering what the user just watched. Here I show that a solution to the next-poster problem is to combine the CF model with a Sequence Aware approach based on Markov Chains, finding an increase in implied user satisfaction over the baseline CF approach. Through an online evaluation on the streaming platform TV 2 Play, I show that using a Hybrid approach to solve the next-poster problem rather than a traditional CF model leads to a lessening in user engagement such as CTR, but an increase in the clicks resulting in a user actually watching the content, this being our implied user satisfaction. Further as a result of this online evaluation, I am able to show that its possible to find the best configuration for a Hybrid model based on Sequence Aware and CF approaches deployed in a real life scenario, through offline evaluation. The results allows me to showcase the importance of considering Sequence of items when recommending for the next-poster problem, and to show that an offline evaluation can imply results in a real world scenario, when considering the Movie domain. Although an improvement, this thesis also shows that there are many more avenues to consider for the next-poster problem.

Making sense of news audiences and their experiences: Practices and responses to news in the age of datafication
2024-06-18 09:00 - 11:00 | Room 514, Fosswinckels gate 6
Welcome to the Final Seminar of our Ph.D Marianne Borchgrevink-Brækhus.
Commentator: Assistant Professor Joëlle Swart (University of Groningen).
On June 18th, the Department of Information Science and Media Studies organizes a PhD Final Seminar for candidate Marianne Borchgrevink-Brækhus. The Final Seminar takes place toward the end of the PhD period, when the candidate is a few months away from submitting their thesis.
Commentator: Joëlle Swart, University of Groningen.
Title: Making sense of news audiences and their experiences: Practices and responses to news in the age of datafication
This thesis explores how people relate to news as experience. I ask how news audiences’ experiences can be captured and how these experiences can help provide a more profound understanding of how people relate to news in everyday life.
Hidden practices
While audiences have become increasingly central to journalistic practices and academic discussions about journalism, the understanding of audiences’ practices and behaviors are paradoxically dominated by professional measures and quantification of user data like clicks, time spent, and sales rather than audiences’ own experiences with news. A central aim of this thesis is to explore hidden aspects of people’s news consumption not found in digital traces and thereby advance a phenomenologically grounded understanding of experiences that shape interactions with news.
To answer these questions, I have conducted recurring interviews and media diaries with news audiences, supplemented with video ethnography and data donations. This empirical material is analyzed through four articles. The first article explicates the overarching term ‘media experience’ as an analytical concept to capture key insights about mediated lives in digital societies. The second article zooms in on the experiences of young adults who do not pay for news and their considerations for not subscribing to digital news subscriptions. The third article critically assesses the metric of ‘time spent’ by analyzing how people navigate when reading news online and how short bursts of news use relate to meaningful experiences. Finally, the fourth article offers a conceptualization of ‘news experience’ as an analytical lens to understand how people relate to news in everyday life, empirically grounded in six distinct forms of news experience.
A holistic approach
The thesis highlights the significance of a holistic approach to understanding people’s complex practices and behaviors. Whereas research and news professionals predominantly have made sense of people’s news use through cognitive approaches that highlight agency and intentionality, this thesis also emphasizes experiential qualities, which encompasses sensory, affective, perceptional, technological, and social dimension.

Transparency, Privacy, and Fairness in Recommender Systems
2024-06-06 12:00 - 13:00 | MediaFutures, Media Futures HQ, 3rd floor, Bergen, 5008
MediaFutures has invited Dipl.Ing. Dr.techn. Dominik Kowald from Graz, Austria to talk about transparency, privacy and fairness in recommender systems. He is research area manager in Fair AI at the Know-Center and senior researcher and lecturer – ISDS (TU Graz).
Recommender systems have become a pervasive part of our daily online experience by analyzing past usage behavior to suggest potential relevant content, e.g., music, movies, or books. Today, recommender systems are one of the most widely used applications of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Therefore, regulations and requirements for trustworthy artificial intelligence, for example, the European AI Act, which includes notions such as transparency, privacy, and fairness are also highly relevant for the design, development, evaluation, and deployment of recommender systems in practice.
This talk elaborates on aspects related to these three notions in the light of recommender systems, namely: (i) transparency and cognitive models, (ii) privacy and limited preference information, and (iii) fairness and popularity bias in recommender systems. Specifically, with respect to aspect (i), I highlight the usefulness of incorporating psychological theories for a transparent design process of recommender systems. Additionally, I show that cognitive models can further contribute to transparency aspects by illustrating how the models’ components have contributed to generate the recommendation lists. In aspect (ii), I study and address the trade-off between accuracy and privacy in differentially-private recommendations.
Dominic Kowald presents a novel recommendation approach for collaborative filtering based on an efficient neighborhood reuse concept, which reduces the number of users that need to be protected with differential privacy. Furthermore, he outlines the related issue of limited availability of user preference information, e.g., click data, in the settings of session-based recommendations, by using variational autoencoders. With respect to aspect (iii), he discusses popularity bias in collaborative filtering-based recommender systems and shows that the recommendation frequency of an item is positively correlated with this item’s popularity. This also leads to the unfair treatment of users with little interest in popular content, since these users receive worse recommendation accuracy results than users with high interest in popular content. Besides, Kowald presents results of an online study on popularity bias mitigation in the field of news article recommendations. He closes the talk by illustrating the trade-off between privacy and popularity bias in recommender systems and by outlining future research possibilities in this direction.
After the talk, Kowald will present the Know-Center, and some of their success stories and lessons learned of applied research projects with industry partners.

AI Regulation and Governance: A Cross-Jurisdictional Approach
2024-06-05 08:30 - 17:30 | Domus Bibliotheca, Karl Johans gate 47, 0162, Oslo
MediaFutures associate professor Samie Touileb is giving a keynote speech on AI technology at this conference.
With the EU’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act being adopted and various major jurisdictions deliberating AI policy at both national and international levels, this conference provides a timely platform to navigate the myriad legal and policy issues AI presents, from intellectual property and tort law to safety legislation. The conference contributes to shaping the discourse on the governance of artificial intelligence in Europe and beyond.
Preliminary Programme
08:30: Registration and Welcome Coffee
Opening Session
09:00: Opening Remarks (Tobias Mahler)
09:10: Key Note: AI Technology (Samia Touileb)
09:45: Break
Artificial Intelligence and Intellectual Property
(Chair: Ole-Andreas Rognstad)
09:55: Copyright Protection of AI-Generated Outputs (Tito Rendas)
10:30: AI and Copyright (Guro Bøe Linnet)
11:05 Break
Digital Constitutionalism and the AI Goveranance Discourse
(Chair: Ingunn Ikdahl TBC)
11:20: AI and Digital Constitutionalism (Giovanni de Gregorio)
11:55: Rhetoric and Reality in AI Policy and Practice (Heather Broomfield)
12:30: Lunch Break
AI and Civil Liability
(Chair: Johannes Hygen Meyer)
13:30: The EU’s Proposed AI Liability Directive (Henrique Sousa Antunes)
14:05: AI Liability and Norwegian Tort Law (Anne Marie Frøseth)
14.40 Break
The EU AI Act and its Alternatives
(Chair: Samson Esayas)
15:00: Lessons Learned from the Drafting of the AI Act (Vera Lucia Raposo)
15:35: Decent Law: Envisioning a Decentralized, AI-optimized Legal Regime (Samuel Becher)
16:10: Break
Concluding Session
(Chair Rebecca Schmidt)
16:25: AI Risk in an International Context (Tobias Mahler)
17:00 Concluding Discussion
17:25 Closing Remarks (Henrique Sousa Antunes)
17:30 Reception

Registration closed
Attendance is gratis but the conference is completely booked. You can sign up for a growing waiting list until May 26th 2024 via this online form. Stay tuned for information about web streaming!
The conference is organised by the UiO’s Research Group on Law and Technology and held under the aegis of the research project ‘Vulnerability in the Robot Society’ (VIROS). The VIROS project is run by the Norwegian Research Center for Computers and Law (NRCCL) in collaboration with the Robots and Intelligent Systems (ROBIN) group at the Department of Informatics, University of Oslo. It is funded by the Research Council of Norway.

One size fits one - accessibility through preferences
2024-06-04 11:00 - 11:20 | Remote
Yngvar Nordberg, representing TV 2 Skole AS and WP4 on Media Content Interaction & Accessibility, will be an invited presenter at the COST LEAD-ME Seminar on “Media Accessibility in the Age of Artificial Intelligence”, taking place on June 4, 2024, at the St. Raphael Resort, Limassol, Cyprus.

Remote participants are welcome:
Video call link: https://meet.google.com/mdr-wyvp-ccm
Yngvar Nordberg, TV 2 Skole AS and WP4, title:
One size fits one – accessibility through preferences

In 1992, all state-run special schools were closed with the exception of schools for sign language students. The ideology was that special education should take place in a classroom setting together with peers at the local school. In the compulsory primary school, achieving a ‘school for all’, or one that is fully inclusive, is an important policy goal and part of the official aims behind the system of education for all children in Norway. TV 2 Schools educational web-service – elevkanalen.no – has for more than 10 years developed an API that governs a very successful preference-dashboard. Teacher set preferences on his/her pupils. Eye-gaze navigation, one-button navigation, two-button navigation etc.; symbol-support; background colors, font color – It is a user-centric design backed up by national activities in Standards Norway Committee 607 and ongoing work in ISO/IEC JTC1/SC 36/WG 7 – metadata for individualized accessibility. To achieve true accessibility – AI is obviously the road ahead. Machine learning that automatically detects the users needs is already a component in our one fits one approach, but we need more. This goes for navigation – AI-driven eye-gaze calibration AI-driven tasks like alt-text to pictures, and captions to film for the blind; text-levels etc. We believe our activities already has a proven potential outside our own organisation in Norway and would love to present them in a Lead-Me – context.
More on COST LEAD-ME:

LEAD-ME aims to help European stakeholders in the field of Media Accessibility to meet legal milestones requested by European legislation. Researchers, engineers and scholars as well as businesses and policy makers will be empowered by LEAD-ME with a common and unique platform which will collect, create, and disseminate innovative technologies and solutions, best practices and guidelines.
https://lead-me-cost.eu/

Political news analysis by YouTubers : Initial results from quantitative processing of a textual corpus
2024-05-31 12:00 - 13:00 | MediaFutures, Media Futures HQ, 3rd floor, Bergen, 5008
MediaFutures Work Package 1 and The Network for culture, inequality and democracy (KUD/CID) at Infomedia invite to a public lecture on the topic of alternative political analysis on YouTube, given by Quentin Gilliotte, Professeur Junior at Université Panthéon-Assas (Paris, France) There will be time for a Q&A.
The productions on digital platforms are becoming an increasingly significant source of information. Within this context, a large number of actors on digital platforms offer analyses and commentary on political current events. Within the Francophone space, we find video creators such as HugoDécrypte, Tatiana Ventôse, Usul, and Gaspard G. These actors place themselves in opposition to traditional media (television, radio) : they advocate for an “alternative” way of handling information, whether in terms of the audience they target, the topics they cover, or the formats they use. How do these different actors address political current events? Considering both economic models and political positions, what topics are mobilized?
The communication will proceed in two stages. Firstly, I will present the method for constructing the corpus of selected channels through data extraction from the YouTube API, utilizing network analysis tools. Secondly, I will present a mapping of the topics addressed by these different video creators based on the automated textual analysis of a corpus of 8740 transcribed videos (representing all videos published by the selected actors between January and July 2023) using a topic modeling method (Latent Dirichlet Allocation).

Humaniora meets Artifical Intelligence
2024-05-31 09:00 - 15:00 | Universitetet i Bergen, Storsalen, Nygårdsgaten 5
UHR-Humaniora and the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Bergen invite to a conference on artificial intelligence and the humanities on May 31st.
The event will be in Norwegian.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has opened up new possibilities for how we communicate, create art, and participate in democracy. However, while the development of AI is often led by quantitative disciplines, there is a growing need for insights from the humanities. The deep understanding of texts and cultural expressions provided by the humanities is crucial for guiding the development of AI in ways that both respect and reflect human experience and cultural diversity.
The goal of the conference is to emphasize the important role of the humanities in the development and understanding of AI. Therefore, we aim to create a forum where humanities researchers can share knowledge, explore new ideas and methods, and build networks that can strengthen the humanities’ contribution to AI research. The conference will thus shed light on the ethical, cultural, and societal implications of AI, and how the humanities contribute and can contribute to this exploration.
The program is still under development and will be updated and adjusted in spring 2024.
Program
Konferansier: journalist og tidligere kultur- og debattredaktør i Bergens Tidende, Hilde Sandvik.
09:00 Velkommen
Pinar Heggernes, prorektor ved Universitetet i Bergen, åpner konferansen sammen med Frode Helland, dekan ved Det humanistiske fakultet ved UiO og leder for UHR-Humaniora, og Camilla Brautaset, dekan ved Det humanistiske fakultet ved UiB.
Hvorfor trenger KI humaniora?
Hva er språkmodeller egentlig?
Samia Touileb er førsteamanuensis i språkteknologi og forsker hovedsakelig på etiske og sosiale utfordringer ved språkteknologiske modeller.  I dette foredraget viser hun hvordan språkmodeller trenes, hva slags data de er bygget på, og hvordan de stadig blir mer avanserte. Touileb viser eksempler på hva språkmodeller kan brukes til, i tilleg til å dele noen eksempler som illustrerer mulige utfordringer og problemstillinger ved bruk av språkmodeller.
Kan kunstig intelligens forstå språk?
ChatGPT og andre store språkmodeller viser imponerende resultater i en rekke oppgaver, som for eksempel spørsmålsbesvarelse, oversettelse og oppsummering. Selv oppgaver som å skrive dikt eller lage korte historier blir nå utført av språkmodeller. Men hvordan forstår egentlig en språkmodell innholdet i en tekst? Pierre Lison er sjefsforsker ved Norsk Regnesentral hvor han jobber med maskinlæring og språkteknologi. Han inviterer oss med til en utforsking av hva som skiller en språkmodell fra menneskelig språkforståelse.
Er kunstig intelligens bra for samisk?
Hva kan store språkmodeller lære om språk med begrenset tekstmateriale, og hvordan påvirkes resultatene når modellene forsøker å kompensere for mangel på tekst ved å inkludere alle språk i samme analyse? Hilde Sandvik møter Trond Trosterud til samtale om Hvordan kunstig intelligens vil påvirke små språk som samisk.  Trond Trosterud er professor i samisk språkteknologi og leder av Giellatekno, Senter for samisk språkteknologi ved Universitetet i Tromsø.
10:00 Pause
10:30 Keynote:
The AI Mirror: Reclaiming our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking
Shannon Vallor , professor ved Edinburgh Futures Institute, University of Edinburgh. Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies increasingly claim to be able to tell us who we are, what we want, what we can do, and where we will go. Yet these predictions reflect only the choices we have already made, not those still open to us. In this talk, Professor Vallor acknowledges the power and utility of these new algorithmic mirrors, while exposing the deception in their promise to define humanity and guide our shared futures.
11:30 Lunsj
Kunst, medier og KI
12:30 KI-forestillinger og humanioras sentrale rolle: Mellom hype, dystopi og hverdagsliv
Taina Bucher, professor og forskningsleder ved Institutt for medier og kommunikasjon ved Universitetet i Oslo. I dette innlegget tar utgangsounkt i “HumAIn: Reimagining AI” som er et nytt møtested for tverrfaglig forskning og utdanning innen humanistiske perspektiver på KI. Hubben utforsker både eksisterende historier og narrativ omkring KI, i tillegg til å ha et uttalt mål om å utvikle nye forestillinger og fortellinger omkring hva KI kan og bør være.
AI as Artistic Intelligence
David Jhave Johnston is a digital-poet writing in emergent domains: A.I., 3D, VR, and code. Author-programmer of the multimedia human + A.I. writing art-project ReRites (Anteism Books, 2019), the theoretical-history Aesthetic Animism: Digital Poetry’s Ontological Implications (MIT Press, 2016), and many online multimedia literary explorations at www.glia.ca. He is currently employed as an Ai-narrative researcher at the UiB Centre for Digital Narrative from August 2023-26 on a team investigating Extending Digital Narrative. He will show and discuss a couple examples of #genAI as “artistic intelligence”, using AI to simulate and stimulate insights into questions of identity.
AIwriting: Creative Practice as a Critical Method for Investigating Large Language Models
In this talk Scott Rettberg explores AI chatbots and text-to-image generation systems as writing environments, and in turn considers how the production of sustained creative works in these environments can serve as critical digital humanities method that reveals the structure, biases, operations and effects of the models themselves. It considers the importance and function of human writing, or “cyborg authorship” within these computational environments, and their potentialities for new genres of dialogic digital narrative. Scott Rettberg is the Director of the Center for Digital Narrative and a professor of Digital Culture at the University of Bergen.
13:30 Pause
14:00 Shaking the black box: Creative approaches to generative models
In this talk Gabriele de Seta showcases some creative approaches to generative models, which use machine learning to synthesize various kinds of content such as text, images, videos or sounds. Inspired by Malte Ziewitz’s idea of “shaking the black box”, he proposes to a more critical and reflexive interaction with these new computational actors. Gabriele de Seta is, technically, a sociologist. He holds a PhD from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. De Seta was part of the ERC-funded project “Machine Vision in Everyday Life” at the University of Bergen and is currently leading the ALGOFOLK TMS-funded project at the University of Bergen
Avsluttende diskusjon
Hilde Sandvik inviterer til oppsummering og paneldiskusjon med:
Shannon Vallor, professor at Edinburgh Futures Institute, University of Edinburgh
Pinar Heggernes, prorektor og leder for styringsgruppe UiB AI
Taina Bucher, professor og forskningsleder ved Institutt for medier og kommunikasjon ved Universitetet i Oslo
Samia Touileb, Samia Touileb, Førsteamanuensis i språkteknologi ved Universitetet i Bergen
Scott Rettberg, Professor and Director for Center for Digtial Narrativ ved Universitetet I Bergen
Konferansen avsluttes klokken 15:00
Programkomite for konferansen: professor Jill Walker Rettberg (UiB), professor Petter Bae Brandtzæg (UiO) og professor, prodekan Aurora Hoel (NTNU) og professor Gillian C. Ramchand (UiT).

International Workshop: “AI & Political Conflict”
2024-05-30 09:00 - 2024-05-31 17:00 | Media Futures at Media City Bergen, 3rd Floor, SUJO Undervisningsrom
The Boston-Bergen Forum on Digital Futures invites to a two-day hybrid event, bringing together prominent scholars to discuss the impact of AI-based platforms and their underlying technological, normative, and economic principles, on political discourse, deep disagreement, and conflict.
We are happy to invite to our second international workshop “AI & Political Conflict”, a two-day, hybrid event scheduled for 30th May (Thursday) and 31st May (Friday) 2024, from 9:00 to 17:00 (CET), and taking place at MediaFutures Research Centre as well as the Philosophy Department at UiB.
Our goal is to bring together prominent scholars from different disciplines to discuss the impact of AI-based platforms, and their underlying technological, normative, and economic principles, on political discourse, deep disagreement, and conflict.
The event will draw on the Boston-Bergen Forum on Digital Futures—an international research network among the ‘Culture, Society & Politics’ and the ‘Practical Philosophy’ research groups at UiB’s Philosophy Department, SFI MediaFutures Research Centre Bergen, the Applied Ethics Center at UMass Boston, and the MIT Program Human Rights and Technology.
Confirmed speakers for the event include

Keynote by Natali Helberger (Amsterdam)
Gloria Origgi (CNRS Paris)
Anna Maria Lorusso (Bologna)
João Vieira Magalhães (Groningen)
Anat Biletzki (Quinnipiac)
Leif Hemming Pedersen (Roskilde).
Carl Öhman (Uppsala)
Eugenia Stamboliev (Vienna)
Mark Thomas Young (UiB)
Alec Stubbs (UMass Boston)
Maria Brincker (UMass Boston)
Filipe Campello (Universidade Federal de Pernambuco)
Jacob Burley (UMass Boston & Harvard)

To join digitally, please open the following zoom link.

Download the abstracts

First Workshop Day, Thu., May 30th / Media City, 3rd Floor / SUJO Undervisningsrom
09.00 am.: Welcome Notes
Section I: Keynote
09.15 am.: Natali Helberger (Amsterdam, online): “ChatGPT: What is the Impact of LLMs on our Democracy?”
09.45 am.: Q&A
Section II: Algorithmic Injustice
10.15 am.: Jacob Burley (UMass Boston & Harvard): “Algorithmic Agency!?”
10:45 am.: Carl Öhman (Uppsala, online): “Gods of Data: Language Models as the personified Authority of the Past”
11.15 am.: Q&A
12.00 am.: Lunch break
Section II: Algorithmic Recognition
13.15 pm.: Leif Hemming Pedersen (Roskilde): “Recognition Struggles in the (In)visibilization Society”
13.45 pm.: João Vieira Magalhães (Groningen, online): “The End of Recognition Theory?”
14.15 pm.: Q&A
15.00 pm.: Coffee break
Section III: Political Technologies
15.15 pm.: Mark Thomas Young (UiB) “What’s Missing from AI Ethics: Economics, Politics and Power”
15.45 pm.: Eugenia Stamboliev (Vienna, online): “Trustworthy AI as a Politicized Conflict”
16:15 pm.: Q&A
17.00 pm.: End

Second Workshop Day, Fri., May 31st / Media City, 3rd Floor / SUJO Undervisningsrom
09.45 am.: Welcome Note
Section I: Algorithmic Epistemology
10:00 am.: Gloria Origgi (CNRS Paris) “How Algorithms Deconstruct Collective Hermeneutical Resources”
10:30 am.: Anna Maria Lorusso (Bologna) “Facts, Fictions, Gossips and other Truth Claims”
11.15 am.: Q&A
12.00 am.: Lunch break
Section II: Activism and Philosophy in the Age of AI
13.15 pm.: Maria Brincker (UMass Boston): “Responsible Agency and the Nature of Surveillance Effects”
13.45 pm.: Anat Biletzki (Quinnipiac) “Israel 2023: A Tale of Two Conflicts”
14.15 pm.: Q&A
15.00 pm.: Coffee break
Section III: Artificial Relations
15.15 pm.: Filipe Campello (Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, online): “Artificial Affects: Making AI a tool for Social Freedom”
15.45 pm.: Alec Stubbs (UMass Boston, online): “AI Friendship: On the Uncontrollability of the Other”

Ethical considerations regarding the use of AI
2024-05-29 11:00 - 2024-05-30 17:00 | Kode Permanenten, Nordahl Bruns gate 9, Bergen
Western Norwegian Film Centre, in collaboration with the Zephyr Media Fund, BIFF, and the Film Association, invites you to industry days and a film festival at Kode Permanenten on May 29th and 30th in Bergen, where we gather the film industry in the region for inspiring lectures, presentations of fresh film and TV projects, and professional updates!

Associate Professor Samia Touileb from the University of Bergen will shed light on ethical considerations regarding the use of AI. What challenges may arise from the use of tools like ChatGPT and OpenAI in the development of a film idea, contracts, or a script? And will it hinder artistic creativity if one must consider these ethical issues?
Samia Touileb is an associate professor in language technology at the Department of Information and Media Studies and holds a master’s degree in artificial intelligence and a doctorate in language technology. She has previously been a researcher at MediaFutures – UiB and a postdoctoral fellow at the Language Technology Group (LTG) at the Department of Informatics at the University of Oslo.
Her research interests include fairness and justice in language technology models, information extraction, automatic summarization generation, and the application of language technology and machine learning methods in social science research.
