SFI MediaFutures

On Wednesday, May 20th, we hosted a seminar at our office, presenting the next stage of collaboration between our team working on VITAL – Verification & Intelligence Tool for Accurate Health Literacy, and MIX 250 students (Media and Interaction Design) at the Institutt for informasjons- og medievitenskap at the University of Bergen (UiB). Representing MediaFutures team, Yelyzaveta Lysova and Mapalo Kayeyi delivered a presentation on the current status of the VITAL project. They introduced the health and lifestyle news dataset used in the project, outlined both short-term and long-term goals, discussed the project’s research questions, and shared insights on their collaboration with Factiverse. The MIX 250 student team: Helga Brudevoll, Linnea Sannes Rønning, Anna Skjeggestad Rønningen, Emma Alr��k Bastiansen, and Zagros Jawar Jawar, presented their VITAL UI prototype. They provided an overview of the insight phase, target user group, and concept development process that led to the 4th iteration of the VITAL prototype. The presentations were followed by a Q&A session and an engaging discussion. Thank you to everyone who participated!

Last week, Professor Luciano Floridi visited us, following honorary doctorate appointment! Professor Floridi was officially appointed honorary doctor at the University of Bergen (UiB) following a nomination initiated by MediaFutures. As part of the occasion, he visited UiB on 20–21 May, delivering a public lecture and leading a workshop on AI and social futures. Professor Luciano Floridi is one of the world’s leading scholars in information ethics and a key international advisor to MediaFutures. Through his role on the MediaFutures International Advisory Committee, he actively contributes to shaping the centre’s research agenda on responsible media technologies and AI-driven innovation, strengthening the bridge between cutting-edge research, industry needs, and societal values. Read more about Professor Floridi's visit on our website: https://lnkd.in/eFYEhJkF Photo: Zulfikar Fahmy, UiB.

More highlights from the Industry Stakeholder Workshop Day! Over the past days, we have been spotlighting some of the panels, presentations, and site visits that shaped the discussions throughout our workshop at Media City Bergen, organized together with Media Cluster Norway. If you missed our previous posts, you can find them here:  Opening session: https://lnkd.in/ebbxRcHJ Liquid Content in Practice: https://lnkd.in/ehtCHKb8 TV 2 site visit & Gaze Tracking Project: https://lnkd.in/eQKxJ67Z Next up: The afternoon sessions at Media Cluster Norway! The last official part of the workshop took place at the Media Cluster Norway office. The sessions turned attention to both audience engagement and the growing challenges of information integrity in the age of AI. Jan Stian Vold from Bergens Tidende discussed strategies for reaching younger audiences, challenging the idea of a “lost generation” while emphasizing adaptation to changing media habits, such as vertical video and platform-native storytelling. Emiliano Guevara from Amedia shared insights on how to reach audiences aged 15-20 and how to build long-term loyalty within networks of young readers. This was followed by Emily LaRosa from MediaFutures, who introduced Curated Information Frameworks - a practical approach to help media organisations decide how to communicate about their use of AI: what to say, to whom, when, and why. The framework responds to the growing need for clear and transparent AI communication in news organisations. The final session addressed AI-supported verification and content moderation. Kajsa Garmann Lønrusten from Faktisk.no presented work on TikTok story scraping and analysis, while Vinay Setty from Factiverse discussed multimodal fact-checking in political contexts, including election-related claims. Closing the session, Hina Afridi from MediaFutures presented research on extreme content and hate symbol detection, developed in collaboration with Faktisk.no. Her discussion raised critical questions about false positives, rare-symbol detection, and the ethical trade-offs involved in automated content moderation. A big thank you to all speakers for sharing their insights and for contributing to important discussions on audience trust, responsible AI communication, and the future of verification in media. If you haven’t yet read our full article about the workshop, you can find it here: https://lnkd.in/dGbsNgpC This concludes our series of highlights from the Industry Stakeholder Workshop Day. Thank you for following along! 

Over the past days, we have been spotlighting some of the panels and presentations that shaped the discussions throughout our Industry Stakeholder Workshop Day at Media City Bergen, organized together with Media Cluster Norway. If you missed our previous posts, you can find them here:  Opening session: https://lnkd.in/ebbxRcHJ Liquid Content in Practice: https://lnkd.in/ehtCHKb8 Next up: The site visit at TV 2 and the Gaze Tracking Project presentation! One of the highlights of the day was a visit to the TV 2 offices, where Are Tverberg led a guided tour that provided hands-on insight into contemporary media production environments. During the visit at TV2, Yuki Onishi (MediaFutures), Snorre Alvsvåg (TV 2) and Nataliya Nymo (Vizrt) gave a talk about the Gaze Tracking Project. The presentation showcased collaborative work between MediaFutures, Vizrt, and TV 2 on user-centric TV production control rooms, including research using eye-tracking to better understand editorial decision-making under pressure. A big thank you to our speakers and hosts for giving participants a closer look at both the practical and research-driven sides of innovation in media production! If you haven’t yet read our full article about the workshop, you can find it here: https://lnkd.in/dGbsNgpC Stay tuned for more insights and highlights from the workshop in the coming days! 

More highlights from the Industry Stakeholder Workshop Day! Yesterday, we began spotlighting some of the panels and presentations that shaped the discussions throughout our workshop at Media City Bergen, organized together with Media Cluster Norway. If you missed our previous post about the opening session, you can find it here: https://lnkd.in/ebbxRcHJ Next up: Liquid Content in Practice! The second session explored liquid content from both industry and research perspectives, highlighting how AI-driven tools are reshaping the production and distribution of news content across formats and platforms. Juan Carlos Lopez Calvet from Schibsted presented Videofy, an AI tool that transforms existing news articles into video formats using original journalistic assets. With journalists remaining “human in the loop”, Videofy demonstrates how AI can support scalable video production while preserving editorial oversight. From the research side, Samia Touileb and Ryan Marinelli from MediaFutures introduced their work within the Norwegian Language Technologies research stream and presented multimodal approaches to liquid news. Marinelli also demonstrated Liquid Looking Glass, an experimental tool exploring how news content can move seamlessly across formats and platforms. A big thank you to our speakers for sharing their insights and demonstrations, and for contributing to important discussions on the future of AI-supported journalism and storytelling! If you haven’t yet read our full article about the workshop, you can find it here: https://lnkd.in/dGbsNgpC Stay tuned for more insights and highlights from the workshop in the coming days! 

More highlights from the Industry Stakeholder Workshop Day! Last week, we shared a recap from our Industry Stakeholder Workshop Day, organized at Media City Bergen together with Media Cluster Norway. If you missed it, you can read the post here: https://lnkd.in/ejiXrZk5   Now, we would like to spotlight some of the panels and presentations that shaped the discussions throughout the workshop. We begin with the opening session! The day opened with welcoming remarks from Odd Gurvin, CEO of Media Cluster Norway, together with Andreas L Opdahl and Chris Senf, Ph.D. from MediaFutures. The first session set the tone for the workshop, focusing on how journalism is evolving in response to AI-driven infrastructures and changing audience behavior. Are Tverberg, Senior Strategic Advisor at TV 2, presented a vision for a “Journalism-as-a-Service” model, arguing for a shift away from static news products toward more fluid, adaptive, and service-oriented forms of journalism. He challenged participants to rethink editorial control, audience agency, and trust, emphasizing that meaningful innovation often requires deeper structural change. This industry perspective was followed by Mehdi Elahi, the leader of the Audience Understanding & Personalisation research stream at MediaFutures, who introduced ongoing research on user modelling and personalization. Highlighting projects developed in collaboration with TV 2, Elahi outlined how contextual and editorial recommendation systems can enhance user experience while balancing individual, business, and societal values. A big thank you to our speakers for sharing their insights and helping spark important discussions about the future of journalism and AI-driven media services! If you haven’t yet read our full article about the workshop, you can find it here: https://lnkd.in/dGbsNgpC Stay tuned for more insights and highlights from the workshop in the coming days! 

We are hiring! 📣 Researcher in Media Content Interaction/Accessibility & AI at MediaFutures Application deadline: 31st May 2026 See details here: https://lnkd.in/esMiGyT6 Follow career opportunities at MediaFutures here: https://lnkd.in/dC9-vB87

On Friday, May 8th, we had the pleasure of hosting Soheila Molaei for an inspiring seminar titled “From Graphs to Graph Neural Networks: Applications in Multi-Modal Heterogeneous Real-World Data”. Soheila Molaei is a Senior Researcher in the Department of Engineering Science at the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on artificial intelligence and machine learning, with particular emphasis on graph neural networks, federated learning, neuro-symbolic AI, and learning from multimodal and heterogeneous data. The seminar explored the fundamental ideas behind graphs and graph neural networks (GNNs), and discussed why they have become powerful tools for modelling complex, structured, and heterogeneous real-world data. A big thank you to Soheila Molaei for sharing her insights and expertise with the MediaFutures community, and to everyone who joined us! 

Happy to share that our SFI MediaFutures paper “Explanations for Recommended Low-Interest News Articles Fail to Persuade Selective News Avoiders” has been accepted at the INRA workshop at ACM UMAP 2026 in Gothenburg. Together with Svenja Lys Forstner and Alain Starke, we investigate whether needs-based explanations in news recommender systems can encourage readers to engage with topics they would normally avoid. Our findings suggest that textual explanations alone may not be enough to overcome selective news avoidance. However, explanation salience and interface design matter: explanations that users actually notice are more strongly associated with engagement. Looking forward to see this work being presented at UMAP 2026! #UMAP2026 #INRA #MediaFutures #RecommenderSystems #NewsAvoidance #ResponsibleAI #ExplainableAI

On April 29, we hosted our first Industry Stakeholder Workshop Day at Media City Bergen together with Media Cluster Norway. By bringing research and industry perspectives together, the workshop marked an important step toward deeper collaboration on how journalism, technology, and AI can be developed responsibly and innovatively - together. A big thank you to our speakers and partners for making this workshop possible! We are grateful for your insights and collaboration! A special thank you to TV 2 and Norsk rikskringkasting (NRK) for the behind-the-scenes site visits and for giving us a closer look at their production environments. Are Tverberg & Snorre Alvsvåg - TV 2, Mehdi Elahi, Juan Carlos Lopez Calvet & Victorina Demirel & Anna Lunde - Schibsted, Samia Touileb, Ryan Marinelli, Yuki Onishi, Nataliya Nymo - Vizrt, Jan Stian Vold - Bergens Tidende, Emiliano Guevara - Amedia, Emily LaRosa, Kajsa Garmann Lønrusten - Faktisk.no, Vinay Setty - Factiverse, Hina Afridi Read more on our website: https://lnkd.in/dGbsNgpC And stay tuned for more insights and highlights from the workshop in the coming days!