Focus on democracy issues in new collaboration between the media sector and academia

The starting points for the venture are the changes in progress in the media sector (press, radio and TV), changes in the behavior of consumers and the technology trend (digitization). There are many questions concerning how these changes impact democracy.

Lindholmen Science Park and representatives from the sector, academia and other organizations would like to use the initiative to create a national collaboration platform to identify common issues and stimulate developments through experiments and projects.

With support from Västra Götaland Region, both the Culture Committee and the Regional Development Committee are now able to focus on actually starting work after two years of preparation. In recent years, Lindholmen Science Park has held discussions with relevant players and already has several highly important perspectives from which to start. Perspectives that require collaboration between the sector, academia and societal players.

“It is fantastic that we are now able to commence this very important work. I am convinced that we will be able to create a new context in which the sector, academia and societal players will be able to jointly conduct research and development projects,” says Niklas Wahlberg, CEO of Lindholmen Science Park.

“We take as our starting point the media’s social role as the adhesive and the smallest common denominator in the local community. The development and changes are currently in progress and are happening rapidly, which is why we are planning to provide quick feedback about who will be leading this effort,” continues Niklas Wahlberg.

During spring 2016, the government’s media policy inquiry will be presented; an interim report was issued on November 5. One objective of the project is to establish a national collaboration platform by summer 2016, which could take certain issues further based on the media policy inquiry.

Media Arena – Lindholmen Science Park

Media Arena Lindholmen is a program at Lindholmen Science Park that endeavors to stimulate the media sector’s development with a focus on film, TV, games and news media.

For more information, please contact:

Martin Svensson, Project Manager at Media Arena Lindholmen Science Park, +46 (0)730-255 299 martin.svensson@lindholmen.se

Niklas Wahlberg, CEO of Lindholmen Science Park, +46 (0)31 764 70 60, niklas.wahlberg@lindholmen.se