2025

TRAVIS - Trust and visibility in everyday digital activities 

01.11.2022 - 31.10.2025

Principal Investigator: Katrin Tiidenberg

Project coordinator: Patience Gombe

The second decade of the 21st century is characterized by a deep crisis of trust and legitimacy. Trust has fallen in all social institutions, rampant information disorganization and the ever-widening spread of images falsified by artificial intelligence are sowing confusion and uncertainty.

What can be trusted at all? However, trust is the basis of functioning social relations and systems - one might even say that of human sociality. At the same time, visual content (e.g. images and videos shared online, as well as graphs and data visualization) plays an increasingly central role in how people communicate and make sense of the world, rather than in how and why certain content and messages are considered convincing or reliable.

As part of the research project "Trust and Visuality: Everyday digital practices (TRAVIS)", we analyze what visual digital trust represents in four different cultural contexts - Estonia, Finland, Austria and Great Britain. We investigate how credibility is created in everyday digital practices and trust is experienced by focusing on health topics in (social) media (e.g. sharing screenshots of a pedometer, covid19 graphs, a selfie of an intensive care nurse with mask marks, pandemic memes, fake graphs created to sow panic on alternative news sites, etc.).

In addition to the innovative conceptualization of digital and visual reliability and culturally sensitive opening, the TRAVIS project also contributes to discussions on social media governance, information management and digital competences, and to the creation of a reliable discussion space.

Homepage: https://www.tlu.ee/en/bfm/research/trust-and-visuality-everyday-digital-practices-travis#funding 

Project info in ETIS: https://www.etis.ee/Portal/Projects/Display/e3ceb34b-b40d-4263-a984-bb2bd478c644   

Project info in CHANSE: https://chanse.org/travis/ 

The project was jointly financed by the foundation Estonian Science Agency and the CHANSE ERA-NET Co-fund program, which was financed by the EU Horizon 2020 program.

Limits of darkness

18.11.2024 – 30.09.2025

Principal Investigator Elen Lotman 

How to show darkness in cinema? It is physically impossible to exhibit complete pure black, because film is always shown through light - whether it is a projector projecting light onto a white screen or a screen with light-emitting elements - the basis for showing film is always light, and black light does not physically exist.

What to do if the operator needs to show total pitch blackness? In connection with a feature film in development, which takes place largely in a room without light sources, a creative need has arisen to experiment with creative research methods on how it is possible to show maximum darkness in the film. This project aims to test systematically how it is possible to show maximum darkness in the film, also taking into account that subtitles will affect the accommodation of the human eye.

The conditions of the experiment are a classic film test - different versions of light, camera sensitivity, exposure are tested with different post-processing and workflow configurations, and the result is observed taking into account the characteristics of both the projection and the television or computer screen.

As a result of the creative research project, test material is created, which can be used both by future filmmakers for further experimentation with the material themselves, and as educational material that demonstrates different possibilities of showing darkness in a situation where there is not what is known in the film as "motivated light" (a light source perceived in the diegetic space, which justifies the use in the frame the nature of the existing light).

Project page on ETIS: https://www.etis.ee/Portal/Projects/Display/4de10194-28ed-4f7a-a0b8-00273b0aea60 

The project was financed by the Ministry of Culture

BECID - Baltic Information Disturbance Center

01.12.2022 - 31.05.2025

Principal Investigator: Andres Kõnno

The primary goal of the Baltic Information Disorders Sekkekeskus (BISK) project is to support the EU's efforts to combat disinformation in the three Baltic countries. This is a particularly important region because it is on the edge of the European Union and has a large Russian-speaking community (around 17%). It is also a region with a diverse cross-section of post-Soviet countries, an important factor to consider when responding to fake news and disinformation.

BECID meets all program priorities and objectives and contributes significantly to the goals of Digital Europe. We are creating an EDMO center in the key area, which brings together 9 beneficiaries and 1 related partner from the three Baltic countries, including 4 research organizations, 4 IFCN certified fact checkers, a non-profit organization with 13 founding members, cooperation with media literacy activities and the Latvian TV channel.

We also have 14 foreign experts who support us on the topics of migration and social cohesion; environmental policy and climate change, European security policy, regional foreign policy of Russia, public health, etc.

Based on numerous past activities of BECID partners, we conduct constant fact-checking (15 times a month), create breaking news podcasts and videos, and analytical reports on disinformation trends in the Baltics, and conduct 5 media literacy campaigns. Special attention is paid to vulnerable groups, such as Russian-speaking people, the elderly and young people.

Homepage: https://uhiskond.ut.ee/et/sisu/balti-infohairete-sekkekeskus  

Project info in ETIS: https://www.etis.ee/Portal/Projects/Display/15d1e630-e591-425a-a8ad-1154f1628c03   

The project was jointly financed by the EU Digital Europe Program (DIGITAL) and the Ministry of Education and Science

Transferring knowledge on climate change from Norway to Estonia via state-of-the-art exhibition and an accompanying educational programme

26.09.2024 – 30.04.2025

Principal Investigator: Arko Olesk 

Awareness about climate change and of the negative impacts of human activity on climate is significantly lower in Estonia compared to Norway, with only 31% of Estonians versus 45% of Norwegians recognizing it as a very serious issue. To address this gap, we aim to leverage the donor’s expertise in raising public awareness and initiating behaviour change.

The Climate House in Norway (UIO) will serve as the donor entity, while the Natural History Museum and Botanical Garden (UT) will implement the project along with ecology, communication, education and psychology experts from Tallinn University. The project will focus on creating an exhibition designed to dispel common misconceptions about climate change and highlight the actions recommended by the scientific community to mitigate it and adapt to it.

The design of the exhibition and the education programs will use insights from science communication and educational psychology to support increased awareness and long-term behaviour change. The main target groups of the project are school kids, families and people with little prior knowledge of climate change. The donor, with their experience of running the Climate House at their museum, will provide guidance to ensure that the exhibition and the accompanying educational program have maximum impact.

The project budget covers personnel, exhibition materials, and travel expenses. The exhibition will debut at the University of Tartu before travelling to other locations across Estonia (for example, the Tallinn Botanic Garden, the Tallinn Zoo and Pernova Nature House). It will be complemented by an extensive educational program aimed at school children and families. Both the exhibition and the educational programme will be actively promoted in each city to ensure broad public engagement.

The project is financed from the Fund for Bilateral Relations of the European Economic Area and the Norwegian Financial Mechanism 

Page in ETIS: https://www.etis.ee/Portal/Projects/Display/a20364e5-bafb-48ad-8191-b57ab5c112a9