The ability to effectively use digital technologies has become a prerequisite for participating in many spheres of social life. Digital inclusion implies that all citizens have an equal chance to participate in the digital society. This project will study the digital inclusion of migrant generations in the Netherlands and develop a new conceptual framework focusing on socio-cultural factors that affect digital inclusion. The team will analyse users, policies, public initiatives and educational practices – a multi-level approach to identify the overlaps and disconnects between the perspectives and needs of different actors, which will ultimately inform more effective policies for digital-inclusion.

This project develops Pixascope, a software package for big visual analytics, to enhance teaching in RUG’s MA track in Social Media & Society. Following the Fit for the Future theme, this proposal aligns teaching with the centrality of visual culture in the media industries and labour markets in which our students will participate. While visual platforms such as Instagram and TikTok are growing in prominence, teaching still prioritises text. Pixascope provides students with support to analyse large datasets of images and videos that are too voluminous for standard qualitative approaches. Pixascope will provide students an interface to benefit from tools to visualise and explore large datasets and benefit from machine learning and computer vision technology. Pixascope will be integrated into an ongoing pedagogical programme, engaging students as co-creators in testing, experimentation, and refinement of the package as well as dissemination. The project’s three main outputs include 1) the software package, 2) a set of video tutorials to support students, and 3) a public-facing website to share Pixascope as well as student work using the package. At the end of the project, Pixascope will be thoroughly tested and refined based on student experiences and use-cases. Pixascope will then be disseminated via a website and exhibition of student work. By providing users with an interface to advanced tools for the study of visual culture, Pixascope will benefit students and researchers across the Netherlands and the world.

In a time when established legacy news media face significant challenges crises in funding models, declining audiences, and fierce competition new forms of journalism are emerging. These new forms differ from traditional journalism in fundamental ways and, thus, the ways in which information relevant to society is produced is undergoing major change. An emerging form of journalistic production is captured by the term ‘entrepreneurial journalism’, which is characterised by a precarious work culture of flex working, freelancing, and converging of personal and professional space and time. Entrepreneurial journalism not only challenges the professional and scholarly understanding of journalism, it also impacts the type of journalistic information available to the democratic public. Characterised by ‘precarious’ and ‘atypical’ work cultures, research of emerging journalistic practices needs to address the volatility and complexity of the field. Conceptualising entrepreneurial journalism as open practice involving a variety of activities and actors, this project moves away from more conventional institutional, newsroom and genre-based understandings of journalism. Advancing an understanding of entrepreneurship as social phenomenon rather than focus on individual traits and actions it: 1) participates in and observes entrepreneurial work (auto-ethnographies); 2) analyses new categorisations and practices of journalism (ethnographies and interviews); 3) examines the economic and material factors impacting its sustainability (longitudinal survey); and 4) theorises the overarching practices of emerging forms of working in journalism and the challenges it contains. Combining practice-based research with more conventional methods, this Vidi-project provides a comprehensive understanding of the practices in the various stages of the journalistic process. The central aim is to theorise emerging shared understandings, everyday work activities, and material contexts of entrepreneurial journalists to understand how these challenge traditional conceptualisations of journalism. Ultimately, it concludes whether these new practices form a sustainable alternative of informing society, enhancing the diversity of information available to democratic publics.

In selectively subsidizing innovative journalistic initiatives, innovation funds shape journalism’s innovation agenda and consequently journalism’s future. But how do these organizations understand digital innovation and to what extent do they safeguard journalism’s public values? By exploring a case study of a Dutch journalistic innovation fund, this project examines which understanding of digital innovation and which underlying values are heralded, and how this shapes the way innovative initiatives are selected and supported. The project elucidates the impact of innovation funds on journalisms future and brings together scholars, innovation stakeholders, and journalists to discuss the implications for journalism’s societal function.

This network brings together researchers who have done pioneering work on (post)socialist television histories in Europe. It aims to develop a research agenda for this novel field of study by enhancing scholarship on the topic, by developing themes of research, methods and theories that are specific to the historical realities of (post)socialist television. This research agenda will propose an understanding of (post)socialist television beyond political histories of the nation-state and beyond discourses of Cold War isolation and East-West antagonism. This research network makes a crucial contribution to the field of European television history. While recent comparative and transnational approaches in this field have demonstrated the need for (post)socialist television histories in Europe, there is currently very little scholarship in this area. This absence is explained, among other reasons, by non-native scholars, lack of access to Eastern European national languages and cultures, without which television historical research in these countries is not possible. Collaboration is central to enabling research to these hard-to-access areas of European television research. By proposing a collaborative framework that is well integrated within the latest initiatives in the field of television studies in Europe and by developing a research agenda that will form the basis for a comparative research proposal and joint publications, this project reclaims (post)socialist television histories from the margins of other disciplines and presents them as a cohesive area of study that enhances and revises European television scholarship.