From Playground to Salon: Challenges in Designing a System for Online Public Debate

This article brings together two separate strands of media research: Online comments and media design. Online comments have long been a topic of much concern, both among scholars and the public at large, fearing negative effects from phenomena such as echo chambers, filter bubbles and hate speech. This paper reports on a project by the Danish public service broadcaster Danmarks Radio, aiming to develop a system for online comments in line with the broadcaster's public service ideals. Through interviews and observations, I explore the challenges encountered by the project team as an empirical case study of cross-disciplinary design work intersecting the fields of design, journalism and new media. I discuss the challenges encountered by the project team in light of Domingo's model of audience participation, suggesting that the broadcaster's strategy represents a development from the "playgrounds" model to a "salon" model. Building on Löwgren and Reimer's work on collaborative media, I suggest some of the broadcaster's struggles point to a lack of adequate methods for balancing interaction design concerns with the concerns of mass communication and journalism

Constructive Comments?:Designing an online debate system for the Danish Broadcasting Corporation

This article brings together two strands of research that have the potential to inform the development of constructive forms of journalism: online comments and media design. Through a three-year-long case study of the development of new formats for online comments on the website of the Danish Broadcasting Corporation, I explore the challenges encountered from two perspectives: the design features of the commenting system and the design process. While the broadcaster has emphasized developing features for strengthening editorial control, user engagement has faltered. A lack of attention to users in the design process seems to have contributed to the problems. These findings have implications for constructive journalism’s ambitions to facilitate audience engagement, in particular when tied to online platforms

Designing Communication Design

Innovating in the field of new media genres requires methods for producing designs that can succeed in being disseminated and used outside of design research labs. This article uses the author's experiences with the development of university courses in communication design to address the research question: How can we design courses to give students the competencies they need to work as designers of new media? Based on existing approaches from UX design and other fields, I present a model that has demonstrated its usefulness in the development of commercial products and services. The model emphasises rapid techniques for user research and ideation; genre analysis; use of pitching and storytelling as a form of prototyping; and humanist methods for evaluation and critique

Ressursinnsatsen innenfor marin FoU 2001

På oppdrag fra Norges forskningsråd, området for Bioproduksjon og foredling, har Norsk institutt for studier av forskning og utdanning (NIFU) kartlagt omfanget av ressurser (utgifter og personale) innenfor marin FoU for 2001. Tilsvarende kartlegging ble gjennomført for 1999. Undersøkelsen dekker FoU knyttet til det biologiske ressurs-grunnlaget med fiskeri, havbruk og foredling, samt områdene marked, organisasjon, rammebetingelser, samfunn og politikk og kystsoneforvaltning i tilknytning til det marine området

‘You can dance your prototype if you like’: independent filmmakers adapting the hackathon

Hackathon-style events are increasingly used to facilitate cross-disciplinary learning and innovation in the media industries. Based on an observational study of a hackathon organized as part of the film festival Nordic Panorama (NP) we analyse the challenges in using the hackathon format to facilitate cross-disciplinary learning and innovation for filmmakers, developers and designers. We find that many participants experienced frustrations resulting from a lack of programming skills and their expectation that the hackathon should result in ‘something digital’. Additionally, ideals for authorship embedded in the working cultures of film and TV professionals impeded the team’s ability to involve all participants on an equal footing. As implications for future hackathons we suggest organizers should consider using tools for end-user development and generative toolkits to facilitate digital making and collaborative learning. We also suggest similar events should avoid including project owners if the group work is based on existing projects

Ressursinnsatsen i medisinsk og helsefaglig FoU i 2013: En analyse basert på FoU-statistisk materiale

Denne rapporten beskriver ressursinnsatsen innenfor medisinsk og helsefaglig forskning og utviklingsarbeid (FoU) i 2013. Rapporten er i hovedsak basert på eksisterende datamateriale hentet fra den nasjonale FoU-statistikken, men andre datakilder er også benyttet. Tilsvarende oversikter over FoU-innsatsen til medisin og helsefag er utarbeidet for 2009 og 2011. NIFU er ansvarlig for FoU-statistikken i universitets- og høgskolesektoren, instituttsektoren samt helseforetakene, og hovedvekt er lagt på innsatsen her. For å få et totalbilde for Norges innsats på området har vi også med noen tall for medisinrelatert FoU i næringslivet og for medisinsk forskning i de andre nordiske landene