» WHAT'S THIS PROJECT ABOUT?

Project's Sumary

The Akademia project aims at exploring new types of on-line journalism based on new information technologies, namely in two fields:

1) Convergence of text, sound and motion pictures (video);
2) Symbioses between journalism and information systems (data bases). This is an interdisciplinary project in the field of communication (journalism and audiovisuals), computing (networks, data bases, streaming) and information management. It is an innovating project both in terms of the methodology and the objectives it sets out to accomplish.

It is likely that the introduction of video in on-line newspapers will radically modify the way in which the news are written and presented. The evolution of server storage capacities and band width allows to foresee that there will be video-clips where we now find photographs. To begin with the on-line journalism induces a new type of writing, in the way it necessarily has to obey to the hypertext logic and corresponding interactivity. The different layout possibilities that a printed newspaper page allows (columns, boxes, font formats, insertion of photographs, etc.) in comparison with the on-line layout (tables, frames, text animation, etc.) have to be taken into account.

On the other hand, inserting video on a on-line newspaper, consequently followed by sound, has implications not only at the level of the text but also at the level of video production and edition. The introduction of sound and motion pictures (video) on journalism raises the issues of analogies, differences and convergence with the on-line (interactive) TV information.

Furthermore, the relationship between journalistic information and information relying on data bases will be researched. The former characterised as an information of surprising extraordinary events, but also very particular, of isolated occurrences and partial. The latter characterised as a systematic, comprehensive, information as complete as possible in which the interest does not rely on the novelty but on the number, quantity, homogeneity and statistic average.

The hypertext and the interactive on-line data bases, establish contacts between newspapers and information systems. From here arises the idea of integrating news on a data base, organised by multiple entries, dates, newspaper sections, places, persons involved, types of facts published, etc. The archive of a newspaper would no longer be a shapeless, successive whole, but an organised set, which would allow for the symbioses between today's news and past data.
Given the informatic capacities of the universities and their needs, as far as information is concerned, the methodology of the project implies the creation of an university newspaper, Akademia, which, using the band width available in the university campus, will contitute the new way of communication, in terms of media, contents and formats. The information existing at present in the universities is scattered and uncoordinated; a fact which reveals that the Portuguese academic sphere lacks a real and professional information philosophy. However, it is important that the universities are also capable of taking advantage of the network as a privileged way of transmitting information to all of those who work, teach and study there.

To articulate journalistic information with institutional information, to include in the same organ, is the best way of combining in the receivers the interest and curiosity to the professional need to be informed. Furthermore, this organ will be a forum for opinion and debate in the academy itself.