Descripción del proyecto
Sentar las bases empíricas de la investigación sobre la multimodalidad
En el ámbito de los estudios de la comunicación, las teorías de la multimodalidad están floreciendo, aunque a menudo carecen de fundamentos empíricos. Esta deficiencia se debe a la escasez de conjuntos de datos multimodales grandes y meticulosamente anotados, esenciales para un análisis riguroso. Por lo tanto, muchos marcos teóricos en este campo se basan en conjeturas más que en pruebas. En este contexto, el equipo del proyecto FOUNDATIONS, financiado por el CEI, creará un amplio conjunto de datos multimodales anotados a partir de objetos cotidianos de interés cultural, como vídeos de redes sociales y periódicos. El proyecto es pionero en una metodología de investigación empírica. Mediante la colaboración masiva de microtareas y la IA neurosimbólica, se diseccionan tareas complejas en partes manejables y se las analiza de manera exhaustiva. Este método enriquece nuestra comprensión de la multimodalidad y nos permite entender mejor el papel de los medios, los modos semióticos y los géneros en la creación de los significados.
Objetivo
This project lays a foundation for conducting data-driven empirical research on multimodality, that is, how human communication and interaction rely on combinations of 'modes' of expression. Theories of multimodality are rapidly gaining currency in diverse fields concerned with human communication, interaction and cultural production. However, most theories of multimodality are based on conjecture and remain without an empirical foundation due to the lack of large, richly-annotated multimodal corpora and methods for their analysis.
FOUNDATIONS solves this problem by developing a novel methodology for conducting empirical research on multimodality in everyday cultural artefacts, such as newspapers, textbooks, magazines and social media videos. This methodology allows critically examining key theoretical concepts in the field medium, semiotic mode and genre and their joint contribution to meaning-making, which renews our understanding of key theoretical concepts in multimodality research and places their definitions on a solid empirical foundation.
To do so, FOUNDATIONS creates large and reproducible multimodal corpora using microtask crowdsourcing, which breaks complex tasks into piecemeal work and distributes this effort to non-expert workers on online platforms. These crowdsourced descriptions are combined with computational representations into graphs that represent the structure of multimodal discourse. For analysing these corpora, the project develops novel methods based on neuro-symbolic artificial intelligence, which enables combining crowdsourced human insights with the pattern recognition capability of neural networks.
The groundbreaking theoretical and methodological advances in FOUNDATIONS go far beyond state of the art by enabling large-scale empirical research while preserving analytical depth needed for multimodality research. This opens up new domains of inquiry for studying multimodality across cultures, situations, artefacts and timescales.
Palabras clave
Programa(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Régimen de financiación
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsInstitución de acogida
00014 HELSINGIN YLIOPISTO
Finlandia