On May 15, 2025, the annual Geomedia Day was held at Elite Stadshotellet in Karlstad. A full day of insightful discussions, research presentations and creative collaboration.
André Jansson opened the event with a welcome address, followed by an update on the upcoming 2025 Geomedia conference from Georgia Aitaki.
The morning continued with a workshop session focusing on the Geomedia Panel data.
Researchers from Karlstad University explored how generative AI search engines, such as Microsoft Copilot, are transforming political news retrieval - and with it, the global flow of information.
The study "Sourcing behavior and the role of news media in AI-powered search engines in the digital media ecosystem: Comparing political news retrieval across five languages" was published in the journal Telecommunications Policy and is co-authored by Professor Cornelia Bra
Peter Wikström, docent in English at Karlstad University, is working together with Geomedia to develop project applications in collaboration with Embracer Games Archive in Karlstad.
– The project focuses on material objects related to historical video games, such as covers, packaging, manuals and the design of discs and cartridges.
– The approach we are using in the research project is multimodal discourse analysis, says Peter Wikström.
Richard Ek and Mekonnen Tesfahuney, both professors in human geography at Karlstad University, recently finished a paper called “Sloterdijk, Geomedia, and the Existential Tourist”.
Annette Hill, professor in media and communication at Jönköping University, joins the Centre for Geomedia Studies at Karlstad University.
Annette, tell us about your background
– My background is in media audiences, with a focus on engagement and cultures of viewing. I started out in the late 1990s at the University of Westminster in media and communications, learning about theories and methods and doctoral supervision.
– Our research makes a valuable contribution to the students’ work in designing places for tourism, where we demonstrate the importance of working with place-based digital development in harmony with places and people, says Lotta Braunerhielm, docent in human geography at Karlstad University.
Geomedia research looks at the relationship between places and media and how they affect each other.
The tourism industry has been characterised by digitalisation for quite a few years. At the same time, the challenge has been that development has primarily been technology-driven.
Mette Mortensen is a professor of media studies at the University of Copenhagen with a doctorate in art and literature and an interdisciplinary background with a Master’s in literary history.
The research project “Sámi ‘Trail of Tears’ Walking Trail” has now been completed. Richard Ek, professor of human geography and project leader, talks about the importance of the control being with the indigenous population and that the culture surrounding Sápmi is extremely important in keeping the stories surrounding the forced displacement of the Sámi alive.
– Our findings have confirmed what we’ve known all along, Richard Ek explains.
People who own or have access to a holiday home are called “the invisible population” because they can be difficult to reach in the event of a crisis. Geomedia researchers at Karlstad University emphasise the importance of increasing the knowledge regarding how crisis communication from authorities needs to reach temporary populations.
Holiday homes are a significant part of Swedish tourism.
Xin Liu, senior lecturer in gender studies at Karlstad University, receives funding for her research from Geomedia to write the book ”Making Air Smart: The Sociotechnical Imaginaries of Atmospheric Data”.
Xin Liu, in what way is this project connected to Geomedia?
- It examines the production, imaginaries, experiences, and implications of atmospheric data, which includes environmental data such as air quality index, remote sensing data of forest, and radar scan of atmosp
It's time to look back on 2023 – the second year for the Center for Geomedia Studies. First and foremost, I want to thank you for all the valuable contributions and efforts that collectively build our shared research environment!
The examples below, taken from our news feed, provide a glimpse of what we were up to during 2023. But much more also took place.
New externally funded projects started – others continued. A new Geomedia Phd, Henrik Bergius, joined us.
- Propaganda is what media and communication research has focused on in Russia – the discourse that I’m looking at was fairly unexplored before the start of the war, says Svetlana Chuikina.
In her doctoral thesis, “(Re)constructing Russian anti-war movements.
The Mediatization of Space through navigational interfaces, or: the digital map as a symptom of (almost) everything that has happened with media.
After a phase of “spatial forgetfulness,” media and communication studies have revisited the intersection of media, space, and place, challenging earlier views of media inherently transcending geographical constrains leading to spatial annihilation and the disappearance of distance.
Briefly tell us about your background
- Academically socialized in media studies, last year I became a professor of design theory at Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design in the city of Halle, Germany. Before that, I worked as a scientific coordinator of the interdisciplinary research school "Locating Media" at University of Siegen that had a strong focus on researching location- and situation-specific media processes by means of location- and situation-specific methods.
