Networks are an integral part of academic collaborations. The existence of networks becomes especially tangible before Christmas, when all networks experience the need of gathering and wrapping up the year. Maarit Jaakkola summarises the academic year of collaboration within her own area of networking: media and information literacy research.
The university’s third assignment, the academics’ collaboration with society – called forskarsamverkan, forskningssamarbeid, or yhteiskunnallinen vuorovaikutus in Nordic languages – essentially boils down to the existence of networks. Connections between researchers within a research field, or within an interdisciplinary area, are also made in networks. We researchers are living in networks.
We, as Nordic researchers, often feel that we have a lot to give to the rest of the world; we can contribute to global networks by sharing the specific knowledge that has been developed in our Northern region. At the same time, we have a lot to learn from what is located beyond our Nordic, European, or Western scope.
When thinking of the network ecologies of my own, the most widespread network ecology is constituted in the field of media and information literacy (MIL) or media literacy (ML) research, a growing field that has quite recently gained a more strengthened academic identity as a field. One sign of that is – along with the increased number of handbooks addressing the signature methodology and identity of the field – the emergence of networks.
The anatomy of networks
Networks are important, as they resonate with the ideal image of academics as living in an academic community. They thus render a lot of symbolic meaning and lend us a feeling of ontological security.
Basically, there are three types of networks. Scholarly networks, consisting of researchers only, are inter-scientific research networks that intend to strengthen collaboration and ties between researchers, often manifesting outwards as an enhanced academic identity. There are also multistakeholder networks where the members are both academic and scientific, and the focus lies on finding common questions for collaboration and exchange between the academy and society. Finally, from the academic perspective, we can observe that there are non-academic networks where researchers only visit to contribute with academic input.
The university’s third assignment essentially boils down to the existence of networks.
There are networks at all levels: global, transcontinental, international, European, bilateral, national, regional, local, and hyperlocal. Global networks are intercontinental, involving members from different continents. Transcontinental exchange can be restricted to Europe and North America, which is often the case in transatlantic collaborations, or between Europe and Africa, such as in Global South collaborations. At the other end, hyperlocal connections involve teams and working groups at the workplace.
Postponed global theme week
One new temporary working group (TWG), dozens of network meetings, hours of information and experience exchange. 2023 has not been a bad year at all, despite the fact that the UNESCO Global MIL Week 2023, due to be organised in Amman, Jordan, was postponed because of the tumults in the Middle East. The annual theme week was, however, celebrated through local events across the world, including the Nordics.
The new TWG at ECREA was established after the Journalism and Communication Education (JCE) section was terminated in 2022. The new group is specifically dedicated to the study of MIL and it is called Media Literacies and Communication Competencies (MLCC). The deadline for abstracts for the Ljubljana conference on 24–27 September 2024 is on 11 January next year.
One of the most long-living structures for MIL research is the MIL research division at the Nordmedia Conference, the Media Education and Literacies. This year’s conference gathered over 370 researchers in Bergen, Norway. The next NordMedia Conference will be organised in 2025 in Odense, Denmark.
Nordicom has been coordinating the Swedish national researcher network for MIL researchers, the Academic Forum for MIL Research, since 2021. It is located at NordMedia Network and run by Nordicom but is part of the organisation of the collaboration structures of the Swedish Media Council, which has the governmental assignment to promote and strengthen MIL in Sweden. The last network meeting of 2023 at the national policy network MIL Sweden was dedicated to the role and functions of MIL research.
UNESCO established an academic network for scholars interested in MIL research and promotion in 2011, called the Media and Information Literacy & Intercultural University Network – in short, the MILID network. There is also another network collecting MIL promoters and practitioners, the UNESCO Media and Information Literacy Alliance, the former GAPMIL. This forum has five regional chapters. The North American and European regional chapter includes the Nordic fora of MIL research.
More open and interconnected
Networks make us prioritise; you cannot be present everywhere, so you basically need to choose which platform is the most useful and interesting to you.
For a person who is engaged in multiple networks, it becomes evident that the major challenge in networks is to coordinate and orchestrate them. There are many overlappings and similar questions, such as the use of artificial intelligence, human rights, or sustainability, and they are addressed separately across the different fora. If there is no interplay between networks, the discussion always starts from scratch instead of information getting accumulated and shared. As researchers are trying to solve the same problems in different contexts, it might be beneficial to interconnect the various networks more.
Increased transparency, reached through increased communication, could be one opportunity. This year, a working group that I was a member of – as part of the national open science coordination in Finland – addressed transparency and openness in scientific associations. According to an open science recommendation, scientific associations and networks should have an online presence and describe their membership criteria explicitly, which makes them accessible to all.
Photo: Alvin Eliasson, 8 years