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DCU Institute to lead €3.9 Million EU Data Journalism Project

DCU Institute to lead €3.9 Million EU Data Journalism Project

The DCU Institute for Future Media and Journalism (FuJo) will lead a €3.9 million project harnessing digital and data technologies for journalism.

The ‘JOLT’ project (Journalism and Leadership Transformation) will hire 15 PhD researchers to investigate technical, business, and ethical aspects of contemporary journalism. Commencing in May it will run for four years.

The researchers will be based in academic and industry environments across Europe including The Irish Times, BBC and the European Journalism Centre.

President of Dublin City University Professor Brian MacCraith said:

“Dublin City University have always played a leading role in journalism education and DCU FuJo have continued that pioneering work across research and thought leadership.

This project award is a further powerful endorsement of this and also a strong reflection of the university’s commitment to remain at the forefront of one of the pillars of democracy.”

FuJo director and Project Co-ordinator Dr Jane Suiter said:

“At a critical time for journalism, DCU FuJo pulled together a multinational team to explore new ways of supporting journalism and its civic functions.

We’re delighted to bring this major project to DCU and look forward to working with the best academic and industry partners across Europe. Beyond research, the project includes many outreach events which will let us share new knowledge with the news industry in Ireland and beyond.”

The 15 projects draw on expertise from multiple disciplines including journalism, data science, computer engineering, and social science. Data science projects will develop new protocols and storytelling forms for video, Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality and will also be supported by the Insight Centre for Data Analytics, a €88m Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre. Data based projects will explore algorithms in news, mining online multimedia data, audience analytics, data mining and data visualisation.

Other projects will examine the political and ethical implications of contemporary journalism including the ethics of using user-generated content.

The JOLT Network includes nine university and industry partners from six countries: Dublin City University; Aristotle University of Thessaloniki; University of Amsterdam; University of Navarra; University of Toulouse III; British Broadcasting Corporation; European Journalism Centre; The Irish Times; and Samsa.fr.