New projects and collaborations 2025
2025 is starting strong, we have four new exciting projects that we proudly present to you!
📣 Science Festival - LiveLabbet 2025
The Science Festival is Sweden's largest popular science event with around 40,000 - 50,000 visits annually, and with target groups all over Sweden. The aim is to create positive attitudes towards research and science, for a vibrant and strong knowledge society for everyone, now and in the future. This year we are exploring fake news, source criticism and AI and during the LiveLab students will get to vote, discuss and learn more about these topics and reflect on what is okay or not to joke about.
📣 University of Gothenburg, Bengt Johansson - Back to the news desk
Why do some events become news and not others? This seemingly simple question is the basis for the research project Back to the news desk - news evaluation in the online world. The research project focuses on the process of change from analog to digital. Researchers Bengt Johansson (Professor at JMG) and Emil Östlund (Lecturer in Journalism at JMG) will conduct participatory observations at a number of the country's largest newsrooms during the year to follow the work on site.
📣 Malmö University, Bo Petersson - CANARIES: early warning to protect democracy, academic freedom and human rights against democratic backlash
The contradictions between democracy and autocracy are one of the most important global societal challenges of our time. Yet, there is a systematic lack of knowledge about possible counter-strategies in cases where the trend starts to go in the wrong direction, from democracy to autocracy. Such a trend includes different kinds of events, which may appear vague, gradual and not strikingly destructive, but which together lead to the erosion of democracy in a country and eventually to its replacement by authoritarian rule. This project aims to gain knowledge and insights by studying the experiences of such turning points in countries that are authoritarian today but have relatively recently undergone a different evolution. What were the early signs of democracy turning into dictatorship? “Canaries in the mine” is a strong and somewhat overused metaphor, but here it is justified: when did you see the birds start to die?
📣 Andreas Widholm, Institute for Media Studies - The TikTok Generation: Young people's media consumption in an era of digital disinformation
What is true and false in the flow of information that young people receive on TikTok? This question is central to the project that the Institute for Media Studies is launching in 2025. In today's media landscape, social media is the primary source of news for young people. Particularly popular is the video platform Tiktok, which has grown explosively in just a few years. The format is both creative and interactive, allowing users to communicate and share information through videos, music and text. At the same time, the platform is a central arena for the dissemination of both verified information and misleading content.
