VICOMM
Visual commons - Social dialog through visual knowledge dissemination (2009-2011)

This project is approved to the MOTIVE -program of  Academy of Finland. The research shall be conducted as a multidisciplinary project by a consortium, composed of the following institutions: University of Tampere (UTA, coordinator), Helsinki University of Technology (TKK) and University of Art and Design Helsinki (TaiK).

The project contributes empirical knowledge about the evolving modes of visual communication, the changing work processes in media production and its interaction with citizen communities, the increasing role of visual knowledge in journalism and how the media production models influence the outcome.

We treat the textual and visual components of media as a tightly coupled construct - the interaction between words, photographs, video, graphics and layout. The project aims to develop concepts for the management and sharing of visuals both in media organizations and citizen groups. We also aim to suggest new ways of producing visuality for knowledge dissemination both in media organizations and by the citizens and to test them in case studies, in the interaction between media organizations and with citizens groups aiming for dialogical communication flow. The project partners embrace various fields of research: journalism, media technology, work psychology and media production processes. Each partner contributes distinct research culture, methods, knowledge and networks of research and industry partners to the consortium.

The objectives of this project are as follows:

- develop a deeper understanding of the visual paradigm in modern media and society

- develop production concepts and practices for visual knowledge creation in journalism and citizen communication

- evaluate the effect of content and contextual factors on visual knowledge

- create a model of the visual knowledge in journalism which includes both 1)the content of this visual knowledge,

i.e. semantic concepts central in journalistic image/video management(archival, search, selection) 2)processes of

representation and sharing of this visual knowledge in both human-human or human-computer interaction.

The leader of the consortium: professor Heikki Luostarinen, heikki.luostarinen(at)uta.fi, from UTA
The leader of the TKK subproject: professor Pirkko Oittinen
The leader of the TaiK subproject: professor Merja Salo
Contact persons in the JRDC: researcher: researcher Jenni Mäenpää, researcher Esa Sirkkunen