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KULMEDIA-Kultur- og mediesektoren

Media Use, Culture and Public Connection: Freedom of Information in "The Age of Big Data" (MeCIn)

Alternative title: Mediebruk, kultur og offentlighet

Awarded: NOK 14.3 mill.

The project "Media Use, Culture and Public Connection: Freedom of Information in the 'Age of Big Data'" (MeCIn) researches how citizens in Norway exercise and experiences their freedom of information, and which roles the media and cultural arenas have for people's relations to the public sphere across socio-cultural divisions. Findings from the qualitative subproject suggest that: - Patters of media use are complex and varied across age and social groups - Age is important, but occupation is also key to understand variations in media use - Those with high education levels have a more varied media diet, and their strong interest in news and cultural seems to have a reciprocal stabilizing effect on their public connection - Many informants highlight the importance of families, friends and neighborhoods for their public connection. There are many roads to public connection, though as well as outside the media - Digitalization leads to increased differences between media users, and a great deal of variation in each media user?s habits, which means that media use to a lesser extent than before is tied to specific social settings in everyday life. Still, many do have established media habits which are important to them. - The smart phone has rapidly become the most important media technology for our informants. - Many describe quick updates on their smart phone as a central in their everyday media use. Many also describe their own smart phone use as problematic, superficial and with little room for concentrated reading. - Citizen ideals where each of us have a responsibility to participate in elections seems to be strongly present among the informants. Yet, many thinks the news media focus on unimportant issues, and many describe a decline in the quality of journalism as well as unwarranted biases. - Social media have grown to become important channels for news consumption from established media as well as from new ones. Many are reluctant to participate in political debate in social media. Findings from the four rounds of the Reuters Institute Digital News Report (2017-2020), which provides comparative data on news consumption across more than 30 countries, including Norway signal how: - Norwegians remain more digital in their news use compared to other Europeans - Only a small minority actively avoids news on a regular basis, and they are more often women, people with no higher education and with low income. - Most Norwegians have high levels of trust in news in general, and low levels of trust are connected to news avoidance. - The smart phone is central to Norwegians? news use, and almost no one has print papers as their mist important source of news. - When accessing news online, Norwegians go directly to a selection of websites. Google use is far less important as a road to news, in contrast to in the EU countries. We also stand out from Europeans in general with a strong preference for established, legacy media, also online. - Social media is a route to news for many, but not as common as main source of news. One in four claims to come across news in social media from providers they would not have sought out on their own initiative. - Few chose to comment and discuss news in public - More people in Norway compared to the EU pay for news online. Findings from analysis of the project's large-scale population survey show how: - Media use as well as uses of expressive culture is tied to class differences, people?s relations to the political system and to the public - Such differences - together with e.g. education and line of work - create mechanisms for inclusion and exclusion which are clearly tied to differences in social resources. - People with high educational levels are to a higher extent oriented towards national and international issues in the public sphere, whereas those with less education typically are orientated towards local issues. - A specific analysis of the NRK's contribution to media diversity shows how the public service broadcaster's offers serves a shared arena for the majority of Norwegians, to a large extent across social divides. - This analysis does, however, also identify some smaller groups which to a lesser extent are oriented towards news, and Norwegian edited media in general. This entails a challenge for the NRK. The project has in addition rethought normative citizenship ideals. In a forthcoming article, the widespread use of the "informed citizen" ideal is criticised. Research from the project substantiates an alternative focus on the resources people have at their disposal when events compel them to move from a state of approximate monitoring to actual engagement with politics and the public. A sub-project has also given special attention to the public connection of a group critical to Norwegian immigrant policies. Their connection to the public can be described as narrow and intense - they are in a sense "alarmed citizens".

Prosjektet har oppnådd følgende effekter og virkninger: - bidratt til publikumsperspektiv på nyhetsforskningen. - lansert en ny teoretisk tilnærming for å forstå forholdet mellom borgerne og offentligheten (gjennom begrepet offentlig tilknytning) - styrket forskning og undervisning på mediebruk som en komponent innen medievitenskap ved UiB. - styrket samarbeid mellom UiB, OsloMet og ISF - styrket internasjonalt samarbeid, særlig med Uni København og Uni Roskilde. Intensjonsavtale inngått som bla innebærer samarbeid om årlige PhD-kurs innen feltet. - bidratt til dreining i norsk mediepolitikk med begrepet "bruksmangfold" gjennom deltagelse i Mediemangfoldsutvalget (Moe), samt utredningsarbeid for Medietilsynet. - Skapt grunnlag for nye prosjektsøknader, inkl bevilgning fra NFR (MUCS, 2020) og Rådet for anvendt medieforskning. - Bidratt til professoropprykk for kvinnelig deltager (Ytre-Arne) - Ført til ERC Consolidator Grant-søknad 2021 (Moe)

MeCIn researches how citizens exercise and experience their freedom of information, and what role media and culture have for people's relations to the public sphere - their public connection - across socio-cultural differences. Founded in normative democratic theory and sociological theories of media use and cultural practices, MeCIn will (1) critically review existing methodological achievements in relevant fields, in order to (2) undertake a comprehensive empirical study of citizens' public connection across media and cultural arenas, to map structural differences and explore everyday experiences. To give due attention to issues of exclusion from the public sphere, the project (3) focuses specifically on studying mechanisms of detachment, and understanding the experiences of marginalized citizens. The empirical endeavours will bring insights into how people in Norway use their freedom of information and connect to the public. These insights will allow for (4) reconceptualizing the role of the citizen in the age of big data. Together, these four steps will bring applied knowledge needed in on going policy processes. MeCIn triangulates original survey data on media use and cultural practices as well as computer assisted large-scale mappings of online media use, with qualitative in-depth scrutiny through diaries and interviews of use across and beyond the media. The project is internationally networked and transdisciplinary throughout, combining approaches from sociology, political science, cultural studies and computer science, with media studies. Through the project design, MeCIn acknowledges the need to grasp the use of non-factual media content and non-mediated cultural arenas to understand the connections, or lack thereof, people make with the public. By studying in detail the civic culture and the practices that constitute participation in the public sphere, the project will empirically improve our understanding of digital divides.

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KULMEDIA-Kultur- og mediesektoren

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