Finnish Innovation Journalism Research Gets 900.000 Euro

Injo as a theme for academic research has taken a big step.

Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation (Tekes) has awarded a big research grant (almost 900 000 euro) to a Finnish research consortium in order to execute research on global innovation journalism 2008–2010. The research consortium will cooperate with my innovation journalism program at Stanford.

The Finnish consortium consist Department of Mass Communication/University of Tampere, Department of Communication/University of Jyväskylä, and Futures Research Centre/Turku School of Economics. All aforementioned institutions have already done research on innovation journalism for several years, but mainly in national, Finnish context.

The main aim of the new research project (acronym as Ginjo) is to enlarge and deeper the knowledge of global innovation journalism, and also develop new working methods and tools for news media. Case studies will concentrate on topics such as “green tech” and eldercare
innovations.

All together different Finnish funders, Tekes, Helsingin Sanomat Foundation, and Sitra, have already agreed to invest 1,6 million euro for innovation journalism research and education until year 2012.

According to Tekes it invested 329 million euro in R&D projects and innovation activities by companies, universities, institutes of higher education and research institutes during January–June 2008.

For more information, please contact Dr. Turo Uskali.

Tekes: http://www.tekes.fi/eng/

Department of Mass Communication/University of Tampere
http://www.uta.fi/jour/index1.html

Department of Communication/University of Jyväskylä
http://www.jyu.fi/hum/laitokset/viesti/en/

Futures Research Center/Turku School of Economics
http://www.tse.fi/EN/units/specialunits/ffrc/Pages/default.aspx