Final Report Summary - HIGHLIGHT (Highlighting EU-funded Health research results via TV media and the internet)
Executive Summary:
The present report includes the main results of the HIGHLIGHT project.
The Key objectives of HIGHLIGHT have been:
- To select 21 Health stories from FP7 projects for subsequent filming and the realisation of the HIGHLIGHT VNRs
- To establish the Scientific Advisory Panel (SAP) to support and validate the selection process of the HIGHLIGHT stories
- To produce and release the VNRs and articles foreseen by the HIGHLIGHT work-plan to the distribution gateways and the media community
- To design an implement the communication strategy and the distribution policy
- To monitor the distribution mechanism towards the TVs and on the web and assess the impacts of the distribution mechanism
- To translate the released TV reportages in 6 languages and engrave onto a DVD for distribution at public events
All these objectives and the related Milestones have been successfully achieved, with outstanding results in terms of outreach via TV media and the internet.
Project Context and Objectives:
HIGHLIGHT achieved most of the results and all the milestones envisaged in the workplan.
By applying a sound and tested methodology for identifying the most prominent results achieved by individual projects in FP7 Health theme, the HIGHLIGHT consortium identified a short list of 57 projects suitable for the realisation of VNRs. The selection is based on criteria related to: attitude to communication and cooperation with HIGHLIGHT, achievements in research and applications, interest and relevance for a lay audience, filming opportunities.
The consortium established a SAP for validating the selected stories and identifying the 21 projects suitable for filming. Based on the inputs from the HIGHLIGHT interviews and the SAP, the HIGHLIGHT team led by the Editorial Manager produced the treatments of the projects, which consist of a set of recommendations and suggestions for the journalist to follow in order to ensure scientific accuracy in the production phase, while suggesting relevant angles in a media perspective, as well as operational hints. As a final result of WP1, the consortium could rely on a set of 21 treatments that fed the video production of WP2.
The media production process started in summer 2013 and ended in September 2014. In addition to the planned VNRs, HIGHLIGHT also published 15 video interviews that were shot during the SAP meeting held in April 2013 in Paris. 63 articles and interviews have been published on the youris.com portal and distributed to multipliers and through social networks. The youris.com platform has been reinforced and all the published videos are tagged by topic.
All the media distribution activities envisaged by the HIGHLIGHT DoW have been successfully implemented. The communication and branding policy of the HIGHLIGHT project has been designed and implemented and contacts established and carried out for distribution to all the main project’s targets. The distribution channels represented by individual TV stations, the Eurovision exchange (EBU) have been addressed for distributing the 21 VNRs (Video News Releases). In addition, the audiovisual production has been included on the existing online services: youris.com portal, the yourismediacenter and the YouTube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/youriscom.
Web distribution of editorial pieces has been implemented through the youris.com platform, multipliers’ syndication and sharing through youris.com social media accounts. The consortium has also implemented a strategy for off line distribution of the audiovisual material –DVDs and USB sticks-to the EC, the scientific communities and selected groups of stakeholders.
The distributed VNRs recorded a total of 265 downloads by TVs, with an average number of downloads per VNR of 12.6 which is slightly lower that the expected result of 15. The number of tracked broadcast is much lower: 52 against 210. These data, however, have to be considered conservative and partial and are likely to further increase over time, based on the consortium’s experience, for at least one year after the project’s end.
They are conservative and partial for a number of factors:
- due to legal issue related to privacy regulation, it has not been possible to fully track the behaviour of people and organisation that download from the yourismediacenter. The figures provided hereby include only the people whose identity has been fully ascertained and, therefore, it does not fully record the accesses and downloads. As it is not possible to provide a reliable estimation the consortium decided not to take into account this share of users
- both ENEX and EURONEWS sometimes provide the material to other TVs but are considered single uptakes in our monitoring system
- apart form the EBU, which provides a download report for every broadcast VNR, the other TVs stations are not always available and keen to provide information about the actual broadcast. This kind of data, on the other hand, are not available on the web, it is therefore nearly impossible to collect them independently of the broadcasters
- most importantly, the data reported hereby cover about one year’s time, from November 2013 to 2014. It is most likely that additional downloads and even more broadcastings will occur after the project’s end. Our long-standing experience in the field suggests that sometimes broadcast occur even after years form the publication date
From November 2013 till December 2014 HIGHLIGHT videos, articles and interviews had 19,497 unique visitors. A part from the visitors on the youris.com website, part of these news were shared on the youris.com Facebook fanpage and the VNRs have been watched on the youris.com Youtube channel. Facebook viewers have been 5,759, Youtube viewers 8,907 and total Twitter external outreach counts 4,390,867.
The result concerning unique visitors on youris.com is to be considered satisfactory considering the expectations from the DoW (at least 45,760 unique visitors): however, this number was estimated taking into account the total unique visitors on youris.com website as whole, not focusing on HIGHLIGHT material only. Considering viewers also on Facebook and Youtube, the total outreach of the HIGHLIGHT stories grows to 34,163 viewers, which represent a relevant share of the previously mentioned number: moreover, an additional portion of online impact is given by web referrals from external platforms.
The total take-ups of HIGHLIGHT material counts 2,472 times, with an average of 29 spontaneous take ups for each news piece. Overall, the sharing of articles on multipliers with syndication agreements gave more than 268,548 visitors.
Based on the experience in the project and on the long-standing expertise of the consortium in science communication, a set of recommendations has been prepared. They are mainly intended as insights aimed at maximising the impact of actions in Health Communication. The key messages in health communication are related to neutrality and independency, multi-channel strategy and localisation of the content. Coordination and clustering of communication activities are key factors in ensuring good governance of health research. Future research in the health theme should be diversified and focused on the various targets, in order to address their specific needs. Finally, general hints for improved science communication include the need for a robust methodological approach, with a clear distinction and balance of roles of the various expertises as well as the increasing requirement for “easy-to-use” communication products for the media.
WP1 – Content Provision
WP1 was successfully completed in the first reporting period and all the expected results were achieved.
- 656 FP7 Health projects identified and categorised, 348 pre-selected and contacted
- 57 interviews with projects’ coordinators and reports produced
- Scoring, mapping and clustering of 56 projects
- A SAP of 15 health world-class professionals established
- SAP guidance and recommendations about the scientific messages and validation of the HIGHLIGHT stories
The objective of WP1 is to select a total of 21 Health stories from FP7 project of the Health theme for subsequent filming and the realisation of the HIGHLIGHT TV VNRs.
ICO in cooperation with YOU implemented a sound and tested methodology for identifying the most prominent results achieved by individual projects in FP7 and guided the “story seeking” process. With the support of ITR, the consortium established a SAP for validating the selected stories and identifying the 21 projects suitable for filming.
WP1 has been successfully completed in the first reporting period. As a final result of WP1, the consortium could rely on a set of 21 treatments that fed the video production of WP2. These are original expert-driven suggestions and guidelines provided to the producers, in order to tailor the production of the video on the scientific insights of the projects in a media perspective.
WP2 – Media Production
WP2 was successfully completed during the second reporting period
Main accomplishments:
- 21 VNRs produced
- 15 video interviews with the SAP experts produced
- 63 editorial pieces produced
The objective of WP2 is to produce and release to the distribution gateways all the media products foreseen by the HIGHLIGHT work-plan, namely a total of 21 Health stories from FP7 project of the Health theme and the 63 associated articles and interviews for the web.
By September 2014, 21 VNRs have been produced, as well as 63 editorial pieces including accompanying Press Releases, Articles and Interviews that have published on the youris.com platform and distributed through social media and to multipliers.
WP3 – Media Distribution
Main accomplishments:
- Design and implementation of the HIGHLIGHT communication strategy
- Communication established towards the TV media: 1– to–1 direct communication with the TV stations and gateways broadcasting through the Eurovision department of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU)
- Web distribution of VNRs implemented through the internet and online platforms (youris.com yourismediacenter, Youtube)
- Web distribution of editorial pieces implemented through the youris.com platform, multipliers’ syndication and sharing through youris.com social media accounts
- Off line distribution strategy established and DVDs and USB sticks distributed
The objective of WP3 are to design and implement a communication strategy and distribute the HIGHLIGHT media products, VNRs and web articles, to the media gateways and to the media community of TV broadcasters, editors and journalists to which youris.com is connected. WP3 envisaged also the production of DVDs and USB sticks for distribution towards the scientific community, other EC funded projects and the EC services
The communication and branding policy of the HIGHLIGHT project has been designed and implemented and contacts established for distribution to all the main project’s targets. The distribution channels represented by individual TV stations, the Eurovision exchange (EBU) have been addressed for distributing the published VNR. In addition, the audiovisual production has been included on the existing online services: youris.com portal, the yourismedia center and the Youtube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/youriscom.
WP4 – Monitoring of Results
Main accomplishments:
- Data about TV monitoring and web monitoring retrieved and analysed
- 265 take-ups/downloads by the TVs; 12.6 on average for VNR
- take-ups made by 90 national TV broadcasters world-wide
- 52 tracked broadcasting examples
- 15 video interviews published on the youris.com portal
- 63 editorial pieces published: 19,497 unique visitors on the youris.com portal; 5,759 unique visitors on Facebook; more than 2 400 take-ups of the
HIGHLIGHT articles by multipliers, with an average of 28 take-ups for each news piece.
- 4,390,867 people external outreach of Twitter
- Youtube account: 8,907 viewers
The objective of WP4 is to monitor the efficiency of the distribution mechanism put in place in WP3 and measure the overall success of the project.
Monitoring is an essential part of the project. Information about broadcastings (date, time, channel, duration, treatment, audience, etc.) is the principal measure of success for the project. A considerable effort has been made to set-up a monitoring service able to track broadcasting and to retrieve broadcasters’ edits, where possible. As for web distribution, data was elaborated by applying automatic tools that collect and monitor reliable statistics also from external platforms and socials, so detecting the overall multiplying effect arising from web.
Project Results:
The main results of the HIGHLIGHT project, corresponding to the exploitable foreground of the project, are constituted by
- the 21 Video News Releases (VNRs) released by the project,
- the 15 Video Interviews to key sectoral players and
- the 63 web articles for internet distribution.
A. VIDEO NEWS RELEASES
The objective of WP2, Media Productions, was to produce and release to the distribution gateways all the media products foreseen by the HIGHLIGHT work-plan, namely a total of 21 Health stories from FP7 project of the Health theme and the associated press materials for the web, 63 pieces according to the DoW.
The production process started in June 2013 and was completed in September 2014.
A key step in WP1 was the creation of an expert interface dedicated to the scientific evaluation and robustness of the VNRs. The Editorial Manager, Sergio Pistoi from iCons, who has been entitled to verify the preservation of the scientific content with the SAP, carried out several activities, such as interviews, attending the SAP meetings and writing the treatments. In performing this activity, the Editorial Managers bridges the WP1 outcomes into WP2. Receiving the inputs from the HIGHLIGHT team interviews and the SAP, the Editorial Manager produced the treatments of the projects, which consist of a set of recommendations and suggestions for the journalist to follow in order to avoid scientific inaccuracies in the production phase, while suggesting relevant angles in a media perspective, as well as operational hints.
The treatment is then shared and discussed with the producers of the VNRs, who then build on it the script of the video. This procedure has been set up for, at least, the following reasons:
- In order make sure that the key messages – especially those from the project Scientific Advisory Panel – are at the forefront in the videos;
- In order to deal with any issues, and manage to solve it, before the shooting phase.
In order to answer to the second point, the treatment provides possible angles for the producers to film: angles are to be considered as expert’s point of view and suggestions, alternative one with other, but not affecting the scientific content of the video. It has to be noted that the treatments are a set of suggestions and guidelines to be discussed with the producers. Their actual application is conditional upon a number of actual and operational circumstances. In this respect, the actual development of the VNR’s stories as represented in the scripts may vary accordingly.
The workflow between the partners of the HIGHLIGHT project was defined at the beginning of WP1 when ICO hired Sergio Pistoi to act as the HIGHLIGHT Editorial Manager, and link the results of the meetings with the SAP to the needs of the journalistic approach.
In this SAP meeting a list of 16 projects were identified, which were considered particularly valuable for their medical research, and which also seemed to provide angles, which could be interesting for a journalistic point of view.
- ANTIRESDEV, Producer: Leonardo Film
- ASCMICROPLAT, Producer: Leonardo Film
- ATLAS, Producer: Gedeon
- NEUROSTEMCELLS + PADDINGTON, Producer: Leonardo Film
- CANCERPATHWAYS, Producer: Leonardo Film
- CHILD-INNOVAC, Producer: Gedeon
- COPING - Producer: Leonardo Film
- DIABIMMUNE, Producer: Gedeon
- EUCLYD - Producer: Gedeon
- EURONEUT-41 - Producer: Gedeon
- EU-PACT, Producer: Leonardo Film
- GENODISC, Producer: Gedeon
- MEG-MRI, Producer: Leonardo Film
- PROSPECTS, Producer: Leonardo Film
- SCHIZDX, Producer: Leonardo Film
- SELECT-AND-ACT Producer: Leonardo Film
After the finalisation of the treatments by the Editorial Manager described above, the video producers Leonardo Film and Gedeon Programmes started contacting the projects, and writing a script, taking into account also the visual aspects of these stories. The video producers informed the consortium about their production schedules and provided pre-scripts through an online management tool called ASANA, where among others, the Editorial Manager would give feedback on the scripts. The ASANA system allowed everyone involved in the HIGHLIGHT project, to be on track of the production schedule of the videos.
When taking contacts, it turned out that the story about the research project COPING was impossible to film for various reasons. The project was about providing children whose parents were in prison psychological assistance. Unfortunately, LEO was not able to find a child who was willing to be filmed in this sensitive issue, neither children who were taking part in the research project, nor children who were not taking part. Therefore, the consortium decided to replace that story.
On January 14th and 15th 2014, a further editorial meeting took place in Paris, where – among other things- the pre-selection of the second batch of projects was agreed, in order to reach the planned number of 21 VNRs:
- AIPGENE, Producer: Leonardo Film
- ENAROMATIC, Producer: Leonardo Film
- MABSOT, Producer: Leonardo Film
- KALADRUG, Producer: Leonardo Film
- EurHEALTHAgeing, Producer: Gedeon
This list allocated four videos to Leonardo Film and one to Gedeon Programmes. Combining, this list with the previous list (and taking into account that COPING had to be cancelled), Leonardo Film then had fourteen scripts and videos to produce and Gedeon Programmes seven. Once again, as the production process started, it turned out that the last project selected EurHEALTHAgeing was not possible to be filmed. The editorial manager and the producers eventually decided to replace this one with the research project FIGHT-MG.
Initially, it was planned that the scripts for the VNRs would go through a validation process by the SAP. The rationale of this choice was to guarantee the highest possible scientific value and editorial coherence of the released audiovisuals. The DoW foresaw two SAP meetings on M10 and M13 in order to firstly validate the 21 projects to be selected for production and secondly to review the scripts of the VNRs to be produced. As explained in the description of Task 1.3 however, the approach to validation was changed and Task 1.3 de facto included the activities foreseen in the DoW for Task 2.2 “Validation by the SAP”. MS2 “Validation of storyboards”, therefore, was achieved within the activities of Task 1.3.
Due to the high profile of the members of the SAP and their limited availability of time, the consortium had to find an alternative to include the input of the SAP and also to proceed with the time schedule of the scripting and production process. Therefore, YOU and ICO allocated the responsibility of validation to the Editorial Manager Sergio Pistoi. Mr Pistoi was prepared the SAP meeting, made interviews, and had long and intense discussions with the members of the SAP to identify the research projects with the largest impact on society and medicine.
As a result of the newly adopted approach, the treatments developed in WP1 to guide the video production of WP2 comprise the indications from the SAP as regard the scientific and innovation content of the videos. It was decided that the HIGHLIGHT Editorial Manager would contact advisors on an individual basis depending on the needs to have additional advices or reviews on a punctual and specific project need. This proposal was formally addressed to Ms Yolande Vermeersch, Project Officer of HIGHLIGHT Consortium at the European Commission on January 22nd, 2014 and validated on February 4th, 2014.
After the validation by the SAP of the scientific messaged to be included in the treatments and the finalisation of the treatments, GED and LEO started with the production process in June 2013 by following the process described above. For this, the producers arranged the filming, book the film crews, arranged and booked the travels, including flights, rental cars, trains or hotels. The following list provides the detailed information finalized video news releases during the project:
Fighting Superbugs
• Project: ANTIDESREV
• Produced and edited by Leonardo Film.
• Shooting Locations: Bremen, Germany; London, UK
• Topic: antibiotic resistance
• Finalisation of the Film: November 2013
New Hopes for an AIDS Vaccine
• Project: EURONEUT 41
• Produced and edited by Gedeon
• Shooting Locations: Guildford, UK; Grenoble, France
• Topic: possible vaccination against HIV
• Finalisation of the Film: November 2013
Does Too Much Hygiene Cause Diabetes?
• Project: DIABIMMUNE
• Produced and edited by Gedeon.
• Shooting Locations: Helsinki, Finland
• Topic: The Hygiene Hypothesis; possible Link between Diabetes and Hygiene
• Finalisation of the Film: December 2013
New Vaccine Protecting Babies from Whooping Cough
• Project: CHILD INNOVAC
• Produced and edited by Gedeon.
• Shooting Locations: Brussels, Belgium; Lille, France
• Topic: new nasal vaccination for newborns
• Finalisation of the Film: December 2013
The Portable Lab
• Project: ASCMICROPLAT
• Produced and edited by Leonardo Film.
• Shooting Locations: Freiburg and Berlin, Germany; Graz, Austria
• Topic: flash test for sepsis
• Finalisation of the Film: January 2014
New Blood Test for Schizophrenia
• Project: SchizDX
• Produced and edited by Leonardo Film.
• Shooting Locations: Cambridge, UK
• Topic: detecting mental illnesses with blood test
• Finalisation of the Film: January 2014
Advances in Treating Huntington’s Disease
• Projects: NEUROSTEMCELL and PADDINGTON
• Produced and edited by Leonardo Film.
• Shooting Locations: London, UK; Siena and Milan, Italy
• Topic: slowing down/stopping the process of Huntington’s Disease; biomarkers
• Finalisation of the Film: February 2014
New Scanning Technology Reveals Detailed Brain Activity
• Project: MEG-MRI
• Produced and edited by Leonardo Film.
• Shooting Locations: Helsinki, Finland; Lausanne, Switzerland
• Topic: combination of MEG and MRI/new ways of brain imaging
• Finalisation of the Film: February 2014
How Many Pills? Ask Your Genes
• Project: EU PACT
• Produced and edited by Leonardo Film.
• Shooting Locations: Rotterdam and Leiden, The Netherlands
• Topic: individualized medication
• Finalisation of the Film: January 2014
Unravelling the Human Brain
• Project: SELECT AND ACT (and THE HUMAN BRAIN PROJECT)
• Produced and edited by Leonardo Film.
• Shooting Locations: Lausanne, Switzerland; Stockholm, Sweden
• Topic: brain research
• Finalisation of the Film: March 2014
New Eco Repellent Against Malaria Mosquitoes
• Project: ENAROMATIC
• Produced and edited by Leonardo Film.
• Shooting Locations: Neuchatel and Geneva, Switzerland; Athens, Greece
• Topic: eco-friendly insect repellent
• Finalisation of the Film: March 2014
On the track of the deadly parasite Leishmania
• Project: KALADRUG -R
• Produced by Leonardo Film.
• Shooting Locations: Geneva, Switzerland; Antwerp, Belgium
• Topic: tropical diseases
• Finalisation of the Film: April 2014
New therapy against rare gene defects
• Project: EUCLYD
• Produced and edited by Gedeon Programmes
• Shooting Locations: Paris, France; Naples, Italy
• Topic: new therapy for Lysosomal Storage Disorders as Pompe disease
• Finalisation of the Film: April 2014
New laser to watch DNA-proteins interactions
• Project: ATLAS
• Produced and edited by Gedeon Programmes
• Shooting Locations: Naples, Italy
• Topic: New technology to look at the interactions between DNA and the proteins
• Finalisation of the Film: April 2014
Proteins: The key for all diseases?
• Project: PROSPECTS
• Produced by Leonardo Film.
• Shooting Locations: Munich, Germany;
• Topic: proteonomics
• Finalisation of the Film planned: May 2014.
Back pain: new tools for prevention
• Project: GENODISC
• Produced and edited by Gedeon Programmes
• Shooting Locations: Oxford, United Kingdom
• Topic: better understanding of the factors involved in the development of chronic back pain
• Finalisation of the Film: May 2014
Why cells turn cancerous
• Project: Cancerpathways
• Produced by Leonardo Film.
• Shooting Locations: Heidelberg, Germany; Vienna, Austria
• Topic: cancer
• Finalisation of the Film: June 2014
Human bones from the lab
• Project: VASCUBONE
• Produced by Leonardo Film.
• Shooting Locations: Würzburg, Germany; Hamburg, Germany
• Topic: living artificial bone
• Finalisation of the Film: June 2014
Twins help progress and diagnosis of rare myasthenia
• Project: FIGHT-MG
• Produced and edited by Gedeon Programmes
• Shooting Locations: Paris, France
• Topic: improvement of the diagnosis of Myasthenia Gravis
• Finalisation of the Film: July 2014
Gene correction for a rare disease
• Project: AIPGENE
• Produced by Leonardo Film.
• Shooting Locations: Pamplona, Spain
• Topic: rare genetic defect
• Finalisation of the Film planned: July 2014
New drug tackles transplant complications
• Project: MABSOT
• Produced by Leonardo Film.
• Shooting Locations: Dublin, Ireland; Leuven, Belgium
• Topic: kidney transplant
• Finalisation of the Film planned: August 2014
All videos were edited and packaged as a Video News Release, i.e. in a preview format (teaser) plus an additional b-roll supplement. The preview format (teaser) is about 3 minutes long, with voiceovers in English. The preview format, and the associated rushes, is intended as the “official” presentation version of the video and as an example of how footage can be edited by a TV station.
The producers Gedeon Programmes and Leonardo Film edited and packaged the VNR footage (b-rolls) to feed the project communication mechanisms, and was then delivered to the distribution team of HIGHLIGHT.
B. VIDEO INTERVIEWS
During the SAP meeting in Paris, the producers Gedeon Programmes and Leonardo Film produced together a set of video interviews of the members of the SAP. In this case, Gedeon Programmes provided the camera crew for the filming of the interviews, while Leonardo Film took care of the subsequent editing process.
The interviews were shot in front of a green screen, so that in the edit suite a virtual background was inserted. This style was chosen, as the location of the SAP meeting (and thus the video interviews) were not visually interesting and the producers felt a virtual background would help not only the individual videos, but also the visual identity of the entire set of the videos.
As the aim was to disseminate them primarily through the web, most videos were produced in English. For the non-English speakers, subtitles were used.
In the end, 15 video interviews with 14 scientific experts were produced, which were published both on youris.com and Youtube. The interviewees included
- Anne Horgan
- Antonio Cassone
- Bernd Evert
- Charles Auffray
- Charles Kelly (two interviews)
- Christophe Thuriau
- David Tancredi
- Gerard Wagemaker
- Gilles Favre
- Natasha Martineau
- Odile Leroy
- Peter Cleary
- Roland Foisner
- Suzanne Dixon.
C. WEB ARTICLES
The consortium produced and published a series of written accompanying articles supporting each of the 21 released audiovisuals. A press release, one article and one interview have been prepared and published together with the VNRs.
In addition to articles accompanying VNRs, the HIGHLIGHT consortium is producing articles and interviews about other 10 projects taken from the baseline of projects assessed by the SAP. These are: PPACTE, DIVINOCELL, COPING, SPHINX, REPLACES, PAIN OUT, NEUROSIS, MALSIG, BRAINCAV, EURHEALTHAGEING and NANOANTENNA.
The decision to include additional projects has been made in order to include a broader range of scientific results that have been assessed as being of high relevance by the SAP but could not be included in the VNRs’ selection.
The coordination and quality control of these articles is responsibility of the youris.com Editor in Chief, Sabine Louet. These articles and interviews are distributed and published together with the media distribution of the released audiovisuals but then follow an independent distribution pathway. Below is a list of the articles published by HIGHLIGHT.
ANTIRESDEV - Article - Rapid detection of superbugs - 18/11/13
ANTIRESDEV - Interview to Peter Mullany – Unveiling antibiotics resistance genes - 18/11/13
EURONEUT-41 - Article - A HIV vaccine preventing healthy cells’ infection - 26/11/13
EURONEUT-41 - Interview to Nicolas Mouz - Progressing towards an efficient HIV vaccine - 26/11/13
DIABIMMUNE - Article - Kids can be too clean - 07/01/14
DIABIMMUNE - Interview to Vallo Tillman: The hygiene hypothesis is not yet a theory - 07/01/14
CHILDINNOVAC - Article - Nasal vaccine: towards an alternative to injection for infants - 14/01/14
CHILDINNOVAC - Interview to Camille Locht: An innovative solution to infant whooping cough - 15/01/14
ASCMICROPLAT - Article - Speed is everything when fighting sepsis - 04/02/14
ASCMICROPLAT - Interview to Gregor Czilwik - Rapid detection of sepsis in infants - 04/02/14
SCHIZDX - Article - Schizophrenia enters the molecular diagnostics era - 11/02/14
SCHIZDX - Interview to Sabine Bahn: Biomarkers to diagnose severe psychotic disorders - 11/02/14
NEUROSTEMCELLS - Article - Huntington's disease: A treatment in sight? - 25/02/14
NEUROSTEMCELLS - Interview to Malin Parmar: Reversing Pakinson’s by programming stem cells as neurons - 25/02/14
PPACTE - Article - To save lives, raise tobacco taxes - 27/02/14
PPACTE - Interview to Maria Leon Roux: A taxation approach to deter smokers - 27/02/14
MEG MRI - Article - Real-time insight into our brain - 04/03/14
MEG MRI - Interview to Risto Ilmoniemi: Picture this: a better image of our brain - 04/03/14
DIVINOCELL - Article - Targeting bacterial cell division to fight antibiotic resistance - 12/03/14
DIVINOCELL - Interview to Miguel Vicente: Blocking bacterial proliferation could overcome antibiotic resistance - 12/03/14
EU PACT - Article - Better diagnostics for thrombosis are a matter of resources - 25/03/14
EU PACT - Interview to Anke-Hilse Maitland van der Zee: Blood thinners at the right dose - 25/03/14
COPING - Article - How can we better care for the children of offenders? - 27/03/14
COPING - Interview to Adele Jones: Children whose parents are in jail have rights too - 27/03/14
ENAROMATIC - Article - Towards effective spatial mosquito repellent - 01/04/14
ENAROMATIC - Interview to Professor Kostas Iatrou: Combatting malaria using natural mosquito repellents - 01/04/14
SELECT AND ACT - Article - Brain model pins down motor decisions - 08/04/14
SELECT AND ACT - Interview to Sten Grillner: Motor behaviour and its neurobiological control - 08/04/14
SPHINX - Article - The fight against hepatitis C in Egypt - 10/04/14
SPHINX - Interview to Matthew Albert: Egypt needs a hepatitis C vaccine urgently- 10/04/14
EUCLYD - Article - Two approaches to treat Lysosomal Storage Diseases - 14/04/14
EUCLYD - Interview to Generoso Andria: Enzyme and gene therapy for treating genetic disorders - 14/04/14
REPLACES - Article - Common links between neurodegenerative diseases identified - 17/04/14
REPLACES - Interview to Monica Di Luca: Parkinson’s treatment revisited to avoid adverse effects - 17/04/14
PAIN OUT - Article - European hospitals compare notes on pain management to improve care - 08/05/14
PAIN OUT - Interview to Winfried Meissner: When big data helps cope with post-operative pain - 08/05/14
KALADRUG-R - Article - Parasite surveillance to support policy against drug resistance - 13/05/14
KALADRUG-R - Interview to Jean-Claude Dujardin – Overcoming Leishmania’s drug-resistant Trojan horse effect - 13/05/14
NEUROSIS - Article - The art of enrolling preterm babies in clinical trials - 14/05/14
NEUROSIS - Interview to Christian Poets: Treating lung disease in infants - 14/05/14
ATLAS - Article - Peering down protein-DNA interactions to better understand how genes work - 20/05/14
ATLAS - Interview to Lucia Altucci: Cancer research could benefit from ultra-fast lasers technology - 20/05/14
PROSPECTS - Article - Mapping proteins in space and time within cells - 28/05/14
PROSPECTS - Interview to Ruedi Aebersold: Unravelling the structure and dynamics of large protein complexes - 28/05/14
GENODISC - Article - Physical work, not the main cause of intervertebral disc degeneration - 03/06/14
GENODISC - Interview to Jill Urban: Genetic factors play a role in lower back pain - 03/06/14
MALSIG - Article - Fighting resistance to antimalarial drug - 05/06/14
MALSIG - Interview to Gordon Langsley: Focus on biological signalling to defeat malaria - 05/06/14
CANCERPATHWAYS - Article - Towards new cancer therapies - 10/06/14
CANCERPATHWAYS - Interview to Michael Boutros: Advancing the search for new cancer drugs - 10/06/14
VASCUBONE - Article - Healing bone defects using regenerative medicine - 17/06/14
VASCUBONE - Interview to Heike Walles: A diverse toolbox for regenerating bones - 17/06/14
BRAINCAV - Article - Picking the right virus candidate for gene therapy - 20/06/14
BRAINCAV - Interview to Eric Kremer: Delivering therapy beyond the blood-brain barrier - 20/06/14
EURHEALTHAGEING - Article - Secrets of youth, based on prevention - 24/06/14
EURHEALTHAGEING - Interview to Ana Valdes: Twins studies to identify the molecular cause of ageing - 24/06/14
AIPGENE - Article - Renewed hope for gene therapy in rare disease - 01/07/14
AIPGENE - Interview to Gloria González-Aseguinolaza: Positive signs for curative treatment against Porphyria - 01/07/14
NANOANTENNA - Article - Designing ultra-sensitive biosensors for early personalised diagnostics - 03/07/14
NANOANTENNA - Interview to Pietro Gucciardi: Working towards a single-molecule biosensor - 03/07/14
FIGHT MG - Article - Network of experts join forces to fight rare disease - 22/07/14
FIGHT MG - Interview to Sonia Aknin-Berrih: How rare models suggest new treatment strategies - 22/07/14
MABSOT- Article - New treatment against transplantation complications tested - 02/09/14
MABSOT- Interview to Mary Reilly: Fast-tracking rare disease drug candidates’ approval - 02/09/14
All HIGHLIGHT Video News Releases (VNRs), Video Interviews, Article and Interviews are available on the www.youris.com website under the HEALTH Section.
All Video News Releases, available in 6 languages (English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Polish) has also been made available on 1000 USB sticks for wider distribution to stakeholders, policy makers and research organisation.
Potential Impact:
A. TV OUTREACH
HIGHLIGHT followed two mainstreams of monitoring the VNRs results in terms of media impact:
- Through the retrieval of all broadcastings that effectively took place, presumably took place, will take place.
- Through the retrieval of access to the www.youris.com website and similar sites, to complement TV broadcasting data.
Additionally, the broadcasters who downloaded the VNRs from the EBU and who are therefore listed in the broadcasting report provided by the EBU for each publication are contacted via telephone and email to check for possible broadcasts. This activity is necessary both in view of tracking broadcasts of the video taken-up through the EBU but also in view of understanding their interest in the topic and, thus, the level of probability for them to download other HIGHLIGHT videos.
This procedure has performed also with the broadcasters registered to the yourismediacenter.
One common way to collect data from TV broadcasts is to personally re-contact the journalists who receive youris.com newsletter with the latest publications, who have downloaded the films from the yourismediacenter or who appear on the EBU list of take-ups.
Very often broadcasters use not only their TV station as their main way to disseminate the stories, but they use also the web. So, monitoring websites of broadcasters is relevant to have an overview of the outreach of the HIGHLIGHT stories.
The HIGHLIGHT Broadcasting tables are prepared by the dissemination team that lists all the information about take-ups/downloads and tracked broadcasts by TV station by checking repeatedly the different broadcasters, download lists and EBU information. The pillars on which the distribution is based are:
- 1-to-1 distribution, i.e. broadcastings generated by direct contacts between the project team and the newscords and commissioning editors of a number of target TV stations;
- Euronews broadcastings, i.e. broadcastings made by the Euronews program “Hi-Tech” and “Science”;
- Eurovision broadcastings, i.e. broadcastings generated by the use of the EBU world feed service.
The Broadcasting Tables conclude the following facts:
- The videos have been taken up by more than 90 national TV stations in 41 countries: the coverage is world wide, including several take-ups outside Europe (such as, to give few examples, from Canada, China, Iceland, Japan, Mexico, Qatar, Russia, Saudi-Arabia and the USA).
- The videos have been broadcasted on several national TV stations in 10 countries: Austria, Croatia, France, Iceland, Israel, Italy, Portugal, Serbia, Switzerland, United Kingdom, plus the pan-European (13 languages) TV broadcaster Euronews.
- The pan-European station Euronews shall be seen as a special broadcaster in the list, as it has European coverage (and beyond), broadcasts in 13 languages and has an overall audience of several tens of millions people per day.
- Tracking of broadcastings of footage downloaded by the EBU exchanges is problematic, as it is not known to which program (news, magazines, etc.) the footage is going to be dispatched. Being done on a proactive basis (stations downloading from the EBU exchanges must execute a series of specific actions for receiving the satellite downstream and are informed two days in advance about content and subject of each VNR), it is highly likely that this material is going to be used for broadcasting.
- As a general rule, it must be stressed the fact that it is not possible to track every single broadcasting at the European level. A current practice experienced during other similar projects is that many TV stations do keep the footage in their video repositories/archives for future, unpredictable usage. In addition, people at TV stations are very often unaware of the use made by the footage they receive.
B. WEB IMPACT
The online distribution strategy for the HIGHLIGHT stories (VNRs, articles and interviews) has exploited the youris.com website with all the features included: mainly, all teasers in video streaming mode, all supporting stories, interviews to experts, scientific and technological outlooks, scientific, popular articles, web2.0 services (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn) and direct access to the yourismediacenter (www.yourismediacenter.com).
In addition to the youris.com website, the youris.com Youtube channel (www.youtube.com/youriscom) includes a section where the HIGHLIGHT stories are stored.
All web distribution, in a larger measure than TV, must be considered a permanent, always accessible legacy for the project audiovisuals, and views can only increase over time, especially in those cases where individual videos are linked to other resources or for very popular social networking platforms such as Youtube.
Even though the distribution of the HIGHLIGHT videos, interviews and articles shall be considered as finished, spontaneous take-ups of editorial pieces and future downloads from the yourismediacenter shall not be considered concluded, thus, guaranteeing to the HIGHLIGHT stories additional future audience and viewers.
From November 2013 till December 2014 HIGHLIGHT videos, articles and interviews had 19,497 unique visitors. A part from the visitors on the youris.com website, part of these news were shared on the youris.com Facebook fanpage and the VNRs have been watched on the youris.com Youtube channel. Facebook viewers have been 5,759, Youtube viewers 8,907 and total Twitter external outreach counts 4,390,867: this last number is to be considered an estimate of possible users who could have viewed the content shared on Twitter and it is particularly interesting because it gives an overview of the outreach achievable through Twitter and, in general, social media.
The result concerning unique visitors on youris.com is to be considered satisfactory considering the expectations from the DoW (at least 45,760 unique visitors): however, this number was estimated taking into account the total unique visitors on youris.com website as whole, not focusing on HIGHLIGHT material only. Considering viewers also on Facebook and Youtube, the total outreach of the HIGHLIGHT stories grows to 34,163 viewers, which represent a relevant share of the previously mentioned number: moreover, an additional portion of online impact is given by web referrals from external platforms.
C. WEB REFERRALS
External web referrals are to be divided into two categories: multipliers with a syndication agreement and spontaneous take-ups.
To generate additional take-ups and boosting the visibility of HIGHLIGHT communication materials, the HIGHLIGHT distribution strategy has foreseen the exploitation of syndication agreements with leading scientific information multipliers, such as, AlphaGalileo, Cordis.Wire Phys.org and WorldNews.
It is possible to have an esteem of the number of visitors that viewed these contents from AlphaGalileo, Cordis.Wire Phys.org while WorldNews doesn’t share data on visitors.
On AlphaGalileo HIGHLIGHT stories had 67,548 visitors, on Cordis.Wire the news had 9,690 visitors and on Phys.org visitors were 191,310.
Overall, the sharing of articles on multipliers with syndication agreements gave more than 268,548 visitors.
D. SPONTANEOUS TAKE-UPS
The reporting for the spontaneous take-ups cannot be as precise as for the syndicated multipliers, since traffic data for all domains are not publicly available. Nevertheless, it is possible to gather a rough idea of the online diffusion of the contents: total take-ups of HIGHLIGHT material counts 2,472 times, with an average of 29 spontaneous take ups for each news piece.
It can be interesting to note that about 80% of these spontaneous take-ups happened via social media: 68% via Twitter and 12% via Facebook. The rest of take-ups happened mostly on news aggregation domains or blogs.
Summing together the take ups on syndicated multipliers and other spontaneous domains, we reach a total of 2,472 direct web referrals that have been multiplying the reach of the editorial contents of HIGHLIGHT. Compared to the objectives stated in the DOW - of 2,205 direct web referrals in total - it is possible to consider the result achieved and satisfactory.
E. YOURISMEDIACENTER
The yourismediacenter is the youris.com repository where journalists can freely download all VNRs published and distributed through the youris.com platform. VNRs are stored in the teaser and b-roll formats, both in HD (High Definition) and SD (Standard Definition): in addition, the teasers of the stories are available in 6 languages (English, Spanish, Polish, Italian, French, German).
The HIGHLIGHT stories are stored under the section “Health” of the yourismediacenter and they will be always available for future downloads and broadcasts by TV stations.
Monitoring and reporting the yourismediacenter downloads is an additional measure of the impact of the HIGHLIGHT stories outreach. The list of downloaded VNR is available since January 2014.
The HIGHLIGHT series recorded a total of 120 downloads from the yourismediacenter: this number can only grow over time, considering future downloads of the stories. To provide few examples, the HIGHLIGHT consortium has been acknowledged about future broadcasts on January 2015 about VASCUBONE story from SRF TV station and about PG Mreza (Serbia) broadcasting other HIGHLIGHT stories.
Contact: Mario Martinoli, Director, youris.com EEIG, rue des Colonies 11, B-1000 Brussels (Belgium) - publisher@youris.com
The present report includes the main results of the HIGHLIGHT project.
The Key objectives of HIGHLIGHT have been:
- To select 21 Health stories from FP7 projects for subsequent filming and the realisation of the HIGHLIGHT VNRs
- To establish the Scientific Advisory Panel (SAP) to support and validate the selection process of the HIGHLIGHT stories
- To produce and release the VNRs and articles foreseen by the HIGHLIGHT work-plan to the distribution gateways and the media community
- To design an implement the communication strategy and the distribution policy
- To monitor the distribution mechanism towards the TVs and on the web and assess the impacts of the distribution mechanism
- To translate the released TV reportages in 6 languages and engrave onto a DVD for distribution at public events
All these objectives and the related Milestones have been successfully achieved, with outstanding results in terms of outreach via TV media and the internet.
Project Context and Objectives:
HIGHLIGHT achieved most of the results and all the milestones envisaged in the workplan.
By applying a sound and tested methodology for identifying the most prominent results achieved by individual projects in FP7 Health theme, the HIGHLIGHT consortium identified a short list of 57 projects suitable for the realisation of VNRs. The selection is based on criteria related to: attitude to communication and cooperation with HIGHLIGHT, achievements in research and applications, interest and relevance for a lay audience, filming opportunities.
The consortium established a SAP for validating the selected stories and identifying the 21 projects suitable for filming. Based on the inputs from the HIGHLIGHT interviews and the SAP, the HIGHLIGHT team led by the Editorial Manager produced the treatments of the projects, which consist of a set of recommendations and suggestions for the journalist to follow in order to ensure scientific accuracy in the production phase, while suggesting relevant angles in a media perspective, as well as operational hints. As a final result of WP1, the consortium could rely on a set of 21 treatments that fed the video production of WP2.
The media production process started in summer 2013 and ended in September 2014. In addition to the planned VNRs, HIGHLIGHT also published 15 video interviews that were shot during the SAP meeting held in April 2013 in Paris. 63 articles and interviews have been published on the youris.com portal and distributed to multipliers and through social networks. The youris.com platform has been reinforced and all the published videos are tagged by topic.
All the media distribution activities envisaged by the HIGHLIGHT DoW have been successfully implemented. The communication and branding policy of the HIGHLIGHT project has been designed and implemented and contacts established and carried out for distribution to all the main project’s targets. The distribution channels represented by individual TV stations, the Eurovision exchange (EBU) have been addressed for distributing the 21 VNRs (Video News Releases). In addition, the audiovisual production has been included on the existing online services: youris.com portal, the yourismediacenter and the YouTube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/youriscom.
Web distribution of editorial pieces has been implemented through the youris.com platform, multipliers’ syndication and sharing through youris.com social media accounts. The consortium has also implemented a strategy for off line distribution of the audiovisual material –DVDs and USB sticks-to the EC, the scientific communities and selected groups of stakeholders.
The distributed VNRs recorded a total of 265 downloads by TVs, with an average number of downloads per VNR of 12.6 which is slightly lower that the expected result of 15. The number of tracked broadcast is much lower: 52 against 210. These data, however, have to be considered conservative and partial and are likely to further increase over time, based on the consortium’s experience, for at least one year after the project’s end.
They are conservative and partial for a number of factors:
- due to legal issue related to privacy regulation, it has not been possible to fully track the behaviour of people and organisation that download from the yourismediacenter. The figures provided hereby include only the people whose identity has been fully ascertained and, therefore, it does not fully record the accesses and downloads. As it is not possible to provide a reliable estimation the consortium decided not to take into account this share of users
- both ENEX and EURONEWS sometimes provide the material to other TVs but are considered single uptakes in our monitoring system
- apart form the EBU, which provides a download report for every broadcast VNR, the other TVs stations are not always available and keen to provide information about the actual broadcast. This kind of data, on the other hand, are not available on the web, it is therefore nearly impossible to collect them independently of the broadcasters
- most importantly, the data reported hereby cover about one year’s time, from November 2013 to 2014. It is most likely that additional downloads and even more broadcastings will occur after the project’s end. Our long-standing experience in the field suggests that sometimes broadcast occur even after years form the publication date
From November 2013 till December 2014 HIGHLIGHT videos, articles and interviews had 19,497 unique visitors. A part from the visitors on the youris.com website, part of these news were shared on the youris.com Facebook fanpage and the VNRs have been watched on the youris.com Youtube channel. Facebook viewers have been 5,759, Youtube viewers 8,907 and total Twitter external outreach counts 4,390,867.
The result concerning unique visitors on youris.com is to be considered satisfactory considering the expectations from the DoW (at least 45,760 unique visitors): however, this number was estimated taking into account the total unique visitors on youris.com website as whole, not focusing on HIGHLIGHT material only. Considering viewers also on Facebook and Youtube, the total outreach of the HIGHLIGHT stories grows to 34,163 viewers, which represent a relevant share of the previously mentioned number: moreover, an additional portion of online impact is given by web referrals from external platforms.
The total take-ups of HIGHLIGHT material counts 2,472 times, with an average of 29 spontaneous take ups for each news piece. Overall, the sharing of articles on multipliers with syndication agreements gave more than 268,548 visitors.
Based on the experience in the project and on the long-standing expertise of the consortium in science communication, a set of recommendations has been prepared. They are mainly intended as insights aimed at maximising the impact of actions in Health Communication. The key messages in health communication are related to neutrality and independency, multi-channel strategy and localisation of the content. Coordination and clustering of communication activities are key factors in ensuring good governance of health research. Future research in the health theme should be diversified and focused on the various targets, in order to address their specific needs. Finally, general hints for improved science communication include the need for a robust methodological approach, with a clear distinction and balance of roles of the various expertises as well as the increasing requirement for “easy-to-use” communication products for the media.
WP1 – Content Provision
WP1 was successfully completed in the first reporting period and all the expected results were achieved.
- 656 FP7 Health projects identified and categorised, 348 pre-selected and contacted
- 57 interviews with projects’ coordinators and reports produced
- Scoring, mapping and clustering of 56 projects
- A SAP of 15 health world-class professionals established
- SAP guidance and recommendations about the scientific messages and validation of the HIGHLIGHT stories
The objective of WP1 is to select a total of 21 Health stories from FP7 project of the Health theme for subsequent filming and the realisation of the HIGHLIGHT TV VNRs.
ICO in cooperation with YOU implemented a sound and tested methodology for identifying the most prominent results achieved by individual projects in FP7 and guided the “story seeking” process. With the support of ITR, the consortium established a SAP for validating the selected stories and identifying the 21 projects suitable for filming.
WP1 has been successfully completed in the first reporting period. As a final result of WP1, the consortium could rely on a set of 21 treatments that fed the video production of WP2. These are original expert-driven suggestions and guidelines provided to the producers, in order to tailor the production of the video on the scientific insights of the projects in a media perspective.
WP2 – Media Production
WP2 was successfully completed during the second reporting period
Main accomplishments:
- 21 VNRs produced
- 15 video interviews with the SAP experts produced
- 63 editorial pieces produced
The objective of WP2 is to produce and release to the distribution gateways all the media products foreseen by the HIGHLIGHT work-plan, namely a total of 21 Health stories from FP7 project of the Health theme and the 63 associated articles and interviews for the web.
By September 2014, 21 VNRs have been produced, as well as 63 editorial pieces including accompanying Press Releases, Articles and Interviews that have published on the youris.com platform and distributed through social media and to multipliers.
WP3 – Media Distribution
Main accomplishments:
- Design and implementation of the HIGHLIGHT communication strategy
- Communication established towards the TV media: 1– to–1 direct communication with the TV stations and gateways broadcasting through the Eurovision department of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU)
- Web distribution of VNRs implemented through the internet and online platforms (youris.com yourismediacenter, Youtube)
- Web distribution of editorial pieces implemented through the youris.com platform, multipliers’ syndication and sharing through youris.com social media accounts
- Off line distribution strategy established and DVDs and USB sticks distributed
The objective of WP3 are to design and implement a communication strategy and distribute the HIGHLIGHT media products, VNRs and web articles, to the media gateways and to the media community of TV broadcasters, editors and journalists to which youris.com is connected. WP3 envisaged also the production of DVDs and USB sticks for distribution towards the scientific community, other EC funded projects and the EC services
The communication and branding policy of the HIGHLIGHT project has been designed and implemented and contacts established for distribution to all the main project’s targets. The distribution channels represented by individual TV stations, the Eurovision exchange (EBU) have been addressed for distributing the published VNR. In addition, the audiovisual production has been included on the existing online services: youris.com portal, the yourismedia center and the Youtube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/youriscom.
WP4 – Monitoring of Results
Main accomplishments:
- Data about TV monitoring and web monitoring retrieved and analysed
- 265 take-ups/downloads by the TVs; 12.6 on average for VNR
- take-ups made by 90 national TV broadcasters world-wide
- 52 tracked broadcasting examples
- 15 video interviews published on the youris.com portal
- 63 editorial pieces published: 19,497 unique visitors on the youris.com portal; 5,759 unique visitors on Facebook; more than 2 400 take-ups of the
HIGHLIGHT articles by multipliers, with an average of 28 take-ups for each news piece.
- 4,390,867 people external outreach of Twitter
- Youtube account: 8,907 viewers
The objective of WP4 is to monitor the efficiency of the distribution mechanism put in place in WP3 and measure the overall success of the project.
Monitoring is an essential part of the project. Information about broadcastings (date, time, channel, duration, treatment, audience, etc.) is the principal measure of success for the project. A considerable effort has been made to set-up a monitoring service able to track broadcasting and to retrieve broadcasters’ edits, where possible. As for web distribution, data was elaborated by applying automatic tools that collect and monitor reliable statistics also from external platforms and socials, so detecting the overall multiplying effect arising from web.
Project Results:
The main results of the HIGHLIGHT project, corresponding to the exploitable foreground of the project, are constituted by
- the 21 Video News Releases (VNRs) released by the project,
- the 15 Video Interviews to key sectoral players and
- the 63 web articles for internet distribution.
A. VIDEO NEWS RELEASES
The objective of WP2, Media Productions, was to produce and release to the distribution gateways all the media products foreseen by the HIGHLIGHT work-plan, namely a total of 21 Health stories from FP7 project of the Health theme and the associated press materials for the web, 63 pieces according to the DoW.
The production process started in June 2013 and was completed in September 2014.
A key step in WP1 was the creation of an expert interface dedicated to the scientific evaluation and robustness of the VNRs. The Editorial Manager, Sergio Pistoi from iCons, who has been entitled to verify the preservation of the scientific content with the SAP, carried out several activities, such as interviews, attending the SAP meetings and writing the treatments. In performing this activity, the Editorial Managers bridges the WP1 outcomes into WP2. Receiving the inputs from the HIGHLIGHT team interviews and the SAP, the Editorial Manager produced the treatments of the projects, which consist of a set of recommendations and suggestions for the journalist to follow in order to avoid scientific inaccuracies in the production phase, while suggesting relevant angles in a media perspective, as well as operational hints.
The treatment is then shared and discussed with the producers of the VNRs, who then build on it the script of the video. This procedure has been set up for, at least, the following reasons:
- In order make sure that the key messages – especially those from the project Scientific Advisory Panel – are at the forefront in the videos;
- In order to deal with any issues, and manage to solve it, before the shooting phase.
In order to answer to the second point, the treatment provides possible angles for the producers to film: angles are to be considered as expert’s point of view and suggestions, alternative one with other, but not affecting the scientific content of the video. It has to be noted that the treatments are a set of suggestions and guidelines to be discussed with the producers. Their actual application is conditional upon a number of actual and operational circumstances. In this respect, the actual development of the VNR’s stories as represented in the scripts may vary accordingly.
The workflow between the partners of the HIGHLIGHT project was defined at the beginning of WP1 when ICO hired Sergio Pistoi to act as the HIGHLIGHT Editorial Manager, and link the results of the meetings with the SAP to the needs of the journalistic approach.
In this SAP meeting a list of 16 projects were identified, which were considered particularly valuable for their medical research, and which also seemed to provide angles, which could be interesting for a journalistic point of view.
- ANTIRESDEV, Producer: Leonardo Film
- ASCMICROPLAT, Producer: Leonardo Film
- ATLAS, Producer: Gedeon
- NEUROSTEMCELLS + PADDINGTON, Producer: Leonardo Film
- CANCERPATHWAYS, Producer: Leonardo Film
- CHILD-INNOVAC, Producer: Gedeon
- COPING - Producer: Leonardo Film
- DIABIMMUNE, Producer: Gedeon
- EUCLYD - Producer: Gedeon
- EURONEUT-41 - Producer: Gedeon
- EU-PACT, Producer: Leonardo Film
- GENODISC, Producer: Gedeon
- MEG-MRI, Producer: Leonardo Film
- PROSPECTS, Producer: Leonardo Film
- SCHIZDX, Producer: Leonardo Film
- SELECT-AND-ACT Producer: Leonardo Film
After the finalisation of the treatments by the Editorial Manager described above, the video producers Leonardo Film and Gedeon Programmes started contacting the projects, and writing a script, taking into account also the visual aspects of these stories. The video producers informed the consortium about their production schedules and provided pre-scripts through an online management tool called ASANA, where among others, the Editorial Manager would give feedback on the scripts. The ASANA system allowed everyone involved in the HIGHLIGHT project, to be on track of the production schedule of the videos.
When taking contacts, it turned out that the story about the research project COPING was impossible to film for various reasons. The project was about providing children whose parents were in prison psychological assistance. Unfortunately, LEO was not able to find a child who was willing to be filmed in this sensitive issue, neither children who were taking part in the research project, nor children who were not taking part. Therefore, the consortium decided to replace that story.
On January 14th and 15th 2014, a further editorial meeting took place in Paris, where – among other things- the pre-selection of the second batch of projects was agreed, in order to reach the planned number of 21 VNRs:
- AIPGENE, Producer: Leonardo Film
- ENAROMATIC, Producer: Leonardo Film
- MABSOT, Producer: Leonardo Film
- KALADRUG, Producer: Leonardo Film
- EurHEALTHAgeing, Producer: Gedeon
This list allocated four videos to Leonardo Film and one to Gedeon Programmes. Combining, this list with the previous list (and taking into account that COPING had to be cancelled), Leonardo Film then had fourteen scripts and videos to produce and Gedeon Programmes seven. Once again, as the production process started, it turned out that the last project selected EurHEALTHAgeing was not possible to be filmed. The editorial manager and the producers eventually decided to replace this one with the research project FIGHT-MG.
Initially, it was planned that the scripts for the VNRs would go through a validation process by the SAP. The rationale of this choice was to guarantee the highest possible scientific value and editorial coherence of the released audiovisuals. The DoW foresaw two SAP meetings on M10 and M13 in order to firstly validate the 21 projects to be selected for production and secondly to review the scripts of the VNRs to be produced. As explained in the description of Task 1.3 however, the approach to validation was changed and Task 1.3 de facto included the activities foreseen in the DoW for Task 2.2 “Validation by the SAP”. MS2 “Validation of storyboards”, therefore, was achieved within the activities of Task 1.3.
Due to the high profile of the members of the SAP and their limited availability of time, the consortium had to find an alternative to include the input of the SAP and also to proceed with the time schedule of the scripting and production process. Therefore, YOU and ICO allocated the responsibility of validation to the Editorial Manager Sergio Pistoi. Mr Pistoi was prepared the SAP meeting, made interviews, and had long and intense discussions with the members of the SAP to identify the research projects with the largest impact on society and medicine.
As a result of the newly adopted approach, the treatments developed in WP1 to guide the video production of WP2 comprise the indications from the SAP as regard the scientific and innovation content of the videos. It was decided that the HIGHLIGHT Editorial Manager would contact advisors on an individual basis depending on the needs to have additional advices or reviews on a punctual and specific project need. This proposal was formally addressed to Ms Yolande Vermeersch, Project Officer of HIGHLIGHT Consortium at the European Commission on January 22nd, 2014 and validated on February 4th, 2014.
After the validation by the SAP of the scientific messaged to be included in the treatments and the finalisation of the treatments, GED and LEO started with the production process in June 2013 by following the process described above. For this, the producers arranged the filming, book the film crews, arranged and booked the travels, including flights, rental cars, trains or hotels. The following list provides the detailed information finalized video news releases during the project:
Fighting Superbugs
• Project: ANTIDESREV
• Produced and edited by Leonardo Film.
• Shooting Locations: Bremen, Germany; London, UK
• Topic: antibiotic resistance
• Finalisation of the Film: November 2013
New Hopes for an AIDS Vaccine
• Project: EURONEUT 41
• Produced and edited by Gedeon
• Shooting Locations: Guildford, UK; Grenoble, France
• Topic: possible vaccination against HIV
• Finalisation of the Film: November 2013
Does Too Much Hygiene Cause Diabetes?
• Project: DIABIMMUNE
• Produced and edited by Gedeon.
• Shooting Locations: Helsinki, Finland
• Topic: The Hygiene Hypothesis; possible Link between Diabetes and Hygiene
• Finalisation of the Film: December 2013
New Vaccine Protecting Babies from Whooping Cough
• Project: CHILD INNOVAC
• Produced and edited by Gedeon.
• Shooting Locations: Brussels, Belgium; Lille, France
• Topic: new nasal vaccination for newborns
• Finalisation of the Film: December 2013
The Portable Lab
• Project: ASCMICROPLAT
• Produced and edited by Leonardo Film.
• Shooting Locations: Freiburg and Berlin, Germany; Graz, Austria
• Topic: flash test for sepsis
• Finalisation of the Film: January 2014
New Blood Test for Schizophrenia
• Project: SchizDX
• Produced and edited by Leonardo Film.
• Shooting Locations: Cambridge, UK
• Topic: detecting mental illnesses with blood test
• Finalisation of the Film: January 2014
Advances in Treating Huntington’s Disease
• Projects: NEUROSTEMCELL and PADDINGTON
• Produced and edited by Leonardo Film.
• Shooting Locations: London, UK; Siena and Milan, Italy
• Topic: slowing down/stopping the process of Huntington’s Disease; biomarkers
• Finalisation of the Film: February 2014
New Scanning Technology Reveals Detailed Brain Activity
• Project: MEG-MRI
• Produced and edited by Leonardo Film.
• Shooting Locations: Helsinki, Finland; Lausanne, Switzerland
• Topic: combination of MEG and MRI/new ways of brain imaging
• Finalisation of the Film: February 2014
How Many Pills? Ask Your Genes
• Project: EU PACT
• Produced and edited by Leonardo Film.
• Shooting Locations: Rotterdam and Leiden, The Netherlands
• Topic: individualized medication
• Finalisation of the Film: January 2014
Unravelling the Human Brain
• Project: SELECT AND ACT (and THE HUMAN BRAIN PROJECT)
• Produced and edited by Leonardo Film.
• Shooting Locations: Lausanne, Switzerland; Stockholm, Sweden
• Topic: brain research
• Finalisation of the Film: March 2014
New Eco Repellent Against Malaria Mosquitoes
• Project: ENAROMATIC
• Produced and edited by Leonardo Film.
• Shooting Locations: Neuchatel and Geneva, Switzerland; Athens, Greece
• Topic: eco-friendly insect repellent
• Finalisation of the Film: March 2014
On the track of the deadly parasite Leishmania
• Project: KALADRUG -R
• Produced by Leonardo Film.
• Shooting Locations: Geneva, Switzerland; Antwerp, Belgium
• Topic: tropical diseases
• Finalisation of the Film: April 2014
New therapy against rare gene defects
• Project: EUCLYD
• Produced and edited by Gedeon Programmes
• Shooting Locations: Paris, France; Naples, Italy
• Topic: new therapy for Lysosomal Storage Disorders as Pompe disease
• Finalisation of the Film: April 2014
New laser to watch DNA-proteins interactions
• Project: ATLAS
• Produced and edited by Gedeon Programmes
• Shooting Locations: Naples, Italy
• Topic: New technology to look at the interactions between DNA and the proteins
• Finalisation of the Film: April 2014
Proteins: The key for all diseases?
• Project: PROSPECTS
• Produced by Leonardo Film.
• Shooting Locations: Munich, Germany;
• Topic: proteonomics
• Finalisation of the Film planned: May 2014.
Back pain: new tools for prevention
• Project: GENODISC
• Produced and edited by Gedeon Programmes
• Shooting Locations: Oxford, United Kingdom
• Topic: better understanding of the factors involved in the development of chronic back pain
• Finalisation of the Film: May 2014
Why cells turn cancerous
• Project: Cancerpathways
• Produced by Leonardo Film.
• Shooting Locations: Heidelberg, Germany; Vienna, Austria
• Topic: cancer
• Finalisation of the Film: June 2014
Human bones from the lab
• Project: VASCUBONE
• Produced by Leonardo Film.
• Shooting Locations: Würzburg, Germany; Hamburg, Germany
• Topic: living artificial bone
• Finalisation of the Film: June 2014
Twins help progress and diagnosis of rare myasthenia
• Project: FIGHT-MG
• Produced and edited by Gedeon Programmes
• Shooting Locations: Paris, France
• Topic: improvement of the diagnosis of Myasthenia Gravis
• Finalisation of the Film: July 2014
Gene correction for a rare disease
• Project: AIPGENE
• Produced by Leonardo Film.
• Shooting Locations: Pamplona, Spain
• Topic: rare genetic defect
• Finalisation of the Film planned: July 2014
New drug tackles transplant complications
• Project: MABSOT
• Produced by Leonardo Film.
• Shooting Locations: Dublin, Ireland; Leuven, Belgium
• Topic: kidney transplant
• Finalisation of the Film planned: August 2014
All videos were edited and packaged as a Video News Release, i.e. in a preview format (teaser) plus an additional b-roll supplement. The preview format (teaser) is about 3 minutes long, with voiceovers in English. The preview format, and the associated rushes, is intended as the “official” presentation version of the video and as an example of how footage can be edited by a TV station.
The producers Gedeon Programmes and Leonardo Film edited and packaged the VNR footage (b-rolls) to feed the project communication mechanisms, and was then delivered to the distribution team of HIGHLIGHT.
B. VIDEO INTERVIEWS
During the SAP meeting in Paris, the producers Gedeon Programmes and Leonardo Film produced together a set of video interviews of the members of the SAP. In this case, Gedeon Programmes provided the camera crew for the filming of the interviews, while Leonardo Film took care of the subsequent editing process.
The interviews were shot in front of a green screen, so that in the edit suite a virtual background was inserted. This style was chosen, as the location of the SAP meeting (and thus the video interviews) were not visually interesting and the producers felt a virtual background would help not only the individual videos, but also the visual identity of the entire set of the videos.
As the aim was to disseminate them primarily through the web, most videos were produced in English. For the non-English speakers, subtitles were used.
In the end, 15 video interviews with 14 scientific experts were produced, which were published both on youris.com and Youtube. The interviewees included
- Anne Horgan
- Antonio Cassone
- Bernd Evert
- Charles Auffray
- Charles Kelly (two interviews)
- Christophe Thuriau
- David Tancredi
- Gerard Wagemaker
- Gilles Favre
- Natasha Martineau
- Odile Leroy
- Peter Cleary
- Roland Foisner
- Suzanne Dixon.
C. WEB ARTICLES
The consortium produced and published a series of written accompanying articles supporting each of the 21 released audiovisuals. A press release, one article and one interview have been prepared and published together with the VNRs.
In addition to articles accompanying VNRs, the HIGHLIGHT consortium is producing articles and interviews about other 10 projects taken from the baseline of projects assessed by the SAP. These are: PPACTE, DIVINOCELL, COPING, SPHINX, REPLACES, PAIN OUT, NEUROSIS, MALSIG, BRAINCAV, EURHEALTHAGEING and NANOANTENNA.
The decision to include additional projects has been made in order to include a broader range of scientific results that have been assessed as being of high relevance by the SAP but could not be included in the VNRs’ selection.
The coordination and quality control of these articles is responsibility of the youris.com Editor in Chief, Sabine Louet. These articles and interviews are distributed and published together with the media distribution of the released audiovisuals but then follow an independent distribution pathway. Below is a list of the articles published by HIGHLIGHT.
ANTIRESDEV - Article - Rapid detection of superbugs - 18/11/13
ANTIRESDEV - Interview to Peter Mullany – Unveiling antibiotics resistance genes - 18/11/13
EURONEUT-41 - Article - A HIV vaccine preventing healthy cells’ infection - 26/11/13
EURONEUT-41 - Interview to Nicolas Mouz - Progressing towards an efficient HIV vaccine - 26/11/13
DIABIMMUNE - Article - Kids can be too clean - 07/01/14
DIABIMMUNE - Interview to Vallo Tillman: The hygiene hypothesis is not yet a theory - 07/01/14
CHILDINNOVAC - Article - Nasal vaccine: towards an alternative to injection for infants - 14/01/14
CHILDINNOVAC - Interview to Camille Locht: An innovative solution to infant whooping cough - 15/01/14
ASCMICROPLAT - Article - Speed is everything when fighting sepsis - 04/02/14
ASCMICROPLAT - Interview to Gregor Czilwik - Rapid detection of sepsis in infants - 04/02/14
SCHIZDX - Article - Schizophrenia enters the molecular diagnostics era - 11/02/14
SCHIZDX - Interview to Sabine Bahn: Biomarkers to diagnose severe psychotic disorders - 11/02/14
NEUROSTEMCELLS - Article - Huntington's disease: A treatment in sight? - 25/02/14
NEUROSTEMCELLS - Interview to Malin Parmar: Reversing Pakinson’s by programming stem cells as neurons - 25/02/14
PPACTE - Article - To save lives, raise tobacco taxes - 27/02/14
PPACTE - Interview to Maria Leon Roux: A taxation approach to deter smokers - 27/02/14
MEG MRI - Article - Real-time insight into our brain - 04/03/14
MEG MRI - Interview to Risto Ilmoniemi: Picture this: a better image of our brain - 04/03/14
DIVINOCELL - Article - Targeting bacterial cell division to fight antibiotic resistance - 12/03/14
DIVINOCELL - Interview to Miguel Vicente: Blocking bacterial proliferation could overcome antibiotic resistance - 12/03/14
EU PACT - Article - Better diagnostics for thrombosis are a matter of resources - 25/03/14
EU PACT - Interview to Anke-Hilse Maitland van der Zee: Blood thinners at the right dose - 25/03/14
COPING - Article - How can we better care for the children of offenders? - 27/03/14
COPING - Interview to Adele Jones: Children whose parents are in jail have rights too - 27/03/14
ENAROMATIC - Article - Towards effective spatial mosquito repellent - 01/04/14
ENAROMATIC - Interview to Professor Kostas Iatrou: Combatting malaria using natural mosquito repellents - 01/04/14
SELECT AND ACT - Article - Brain model pins down motor decisions - 08/04/14
SELECT AND ACT - Interview to Sten Grillner: Motor behaviour and its neurobiological control - 08/04/14
SPHINX - Article - The fight against hepatitis C in Egypt - 10/04/14
SPHINX - Interview to Matthew Albert: Egypt needs a hepatitis C vaccine urgently- 10/04/14
EUCLYD - Article - Two approaches to treat Lysosomal Storage Diseases - 14/04/14
EUCLYD - Interview to Generoso Andria: Enzyme and gene therapy for treating genetic disorders - 14/04/14
REPLACES - Article - Common links between neurodegenerative diseases identified - 17/04/14
REPLACES - Interview to Monica Di Luca: Parkinson’s treatment revisited to avoid adverse effects - 17/04/14
PAIN OUT - Article - European hospitals compare notes on pain management to improve care - 08/05/14
PAIN OUT - Interview to Winfried Meissner: When big data helps cope with post-operative pain - 08/05/14
KALADRUG-R - Article - Parasite surveillance to support policy against drug resistance - 13/05/14
KALADRUG-R - Interview to Jean-Claude Dujardin – Overcoming Leishmania’s drug-resistant Trojan horse effect - 13/05/14
NEUROSIS - Article - The art of enrolling preterm babies in clinical trials - 14/05/14
NEUROSIS - Interview to Christian Poets: Treating lung disease in infants - 14/05/14
ATLAS - Article - Peering down protein-DNA interactions to better understand how genes work - 20/05/14
ATLAS - Interview to Lucia Altucci: Cancer research could benefit from ultra-fast lasers technology - 20/05/14
PROSPECTS - Article - Mapping proteins in space and time within cells - 28/05/14
PROSPECTS - Interview to Ruedi Aebersold: Unravelling the structure and dynamics of large protein complexes - 28/05/14
GENODISC - Article - Physical work, not the main cause of intervertebral disc degeneration - 03/06/14
GENODISC - Interview to Jill Urban: Genetic factors play a role in lower back pain - 03/06/14
MALSIG - Article - Fighting resistance to antimalarial drug - 05/06/14
MALSIG - Interview to Gordon Langsley: Focus on biological signalling to defeat malaria - 05/06/14
CANCERPATHWAYS - Article - Towards new cancer therapies - 10/06/14
CANCERPATHWAYS - Interview to Michael Boutros: Advancing the search for new cancer drugs - 10/06/14
VASCUBONE - Article - Healing bone defects using regenerative medicine - 17/06/14
VASCUBONE - Interview to Heike Walles: A diverse toolbox for regenerating bones - 17/06/14
BRAINCAV - Article - Picking the right virus candidate for gene therapy - 20/06/14
BRAINCAV - Interview to Eric Kremer: Delivering therapy beyond the blood-brain barrier - 20/06/14
EURHEALTHAGEING - Article - Secrets of youth, based on prevention - 24/06/14
EURHEALTHAGEING - Interview to Ana Valdes: Twins studies to identify the molecular cause of ageing - 24/06/14
AIPGENE - Article - Renewed hope for gene therapy in rare disease - 01/07/14
AIPGENE - Interview to Gloria González-Aseguinolaza: Positive signs for curative treatment against Porphyria - 01/07/14
NANOANTENNA - Article - Designing ultra-sensitive biosensors for early personalised diagnostics - 03/07/14
NANOANTENNA - Interview to Pietro Gucciardi: Working towards a single-molecule biosensor - 03/07/14
FIGHT MG - Article - Network of experts join forces to fight rare disease - 22/07/14
FIGHT MG - Interview to Sonia Aknin-Berrih: How rare models suggest new treatment strategies - 22/07/14
MABSOT- Article - New treatment against transplantation complications tested - 02/09/14
MABSOT- Interview to Mary Reilly: Fast-tracking rare disease drug candidates’ approval - 02/09/14
All HIGHLIGHT Video News Releases (VNRs), Video Interviews, Article and Interviews are available on the www.youris.com website under the HEALTH Section.
All Video News Releases, available in 6 languages (English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Polish) has also been made available on 1000 USB sticks for wider distribution to stakeholders, policy makers and research organisation.
Potential Impact:
A. TV OUTREACH
HIGHLIGHT followed two mainstreams of monitoring the VNRs results in terms of media impact:
- Through the retrieval of all broadcastings that effectively took place, presumably took place, will take place.
- Through the retrieval of access to the www.youris.com website and similar sites, to complement TV broadcasting data.
Additionally, the broadcasters who downloaded the VNRs from the EBU and who are therefore listed in the broadcasting report provided by the EBU for each publication are contacted via telephone and email to check for possible broadcasts. This activity is necessary both in view of tracking broadcasts of the video taken-up through the EBU but also in view of understanding their interest in the topic and, thus, the level of probability for them to download other HIGHLIGHT videos.
This procedure has performed also with the broadcasters registered to the yourismediacenter.
One common way to collect data from TV broadcasts is to personally re-contact the journalists who receive youris.com newsletter with the latest publications, who have downloaded the films from the yourismediacenter or who appear on the EBU list of take-ups.
Very often broadcasters use not only their TV station as their main way to disseminate the stories, but they use also the web. So, monitoring websites of broadcasters is relevant to have an overview of the outreach of the HIGHLIGHT stories.
The HIGHLIGHT Broadcasting tables are prepared by the dissemination team that lists all the information about take-ups/downloads and tracked broadcasts by TV station by checking repeatedly the different broadcasters, download lists and EBU information. The pillars on which the distribution is based are:
- 1-to-1 distribution, i.e. broadcastings generated by direct contacts between the project team and the newscords and commissioning editors of a number of target TV stations;
- Euronews broadcastings, i.e. broadcastings made by the Euronews program “Hi-Tech” and “Science”;
- Eurovision broadcastings, i.e. broadcastings generated by the use of the EBU world feed service.
The Broadcasting Tables conclude the following facts:
- The videos have been taken up by more than 90 national TV stations in 41 countries: the coverage is world wide, including several take-ups outside Europe (such as, to give few examples, from Canada, China, Iceland, Japan, Mexico, Qatar, Russia, Saudi-Arabia and the USA).
- The videos have been broadcasted on several national TV stations in 10 countries: Austria, Croatia, France, Iceland, Israel, Italy, Portugal, Serbia, Switzerland, United Kingdom, plus the pan-European (13 languages) TV broadcaster Euronews.
- The pan-European station Euronews shall be seen as a special broadcaster in the list, as it has European coverage (and beyond), broadcasts in 13 languages and has an overall audience of several tens of millions people per day.
- Tracking of broadcastings of footage downloaded by the EBU exchanges is problematic, as it is not known to which program (news, magazines, etc.) the footage is going to be dispatched. Being done on a proactive basis (stations downloading from the EBU exchanges must execute a series of specific actions for receiving the satellite downstream and are informed two days in advance about content and subject of each VNR), it is highly likely that this material is going to be used for broadcasting.
- As a general rule, it must be stressed the fact that it is not possible to track every single broadcasting at the European level. A current practice experienced during other similar projects is that many TV stations do keep the footage in their video repositories/archives for future, unpredictable usage. In addition, people at TV stations are very often unaware of the use made by the footage they receive.
B. WEB IMPACT
The online distribution strategy for the HIGHLIGHT stories (VNRs, articles and interviews) has exploited the youris.com website with all the features included: mainly, all teasers in video streaming mode, all supporting stories, interviews to experts, scientific and technological outlooks, scientific, popular articles, web2.0 services (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn) and direct access to the yourismediacenter (www.yourismediacenter.com).
In addition to the youris.com website, the youris.com Youtube channel (www.youtube.com/youriscom) includes a section where the HIGHLIGHT stories are stored.
All web distribution, in a larger measure than TV, must be considered a permanent, always accessible legacy for the project audiovisuals, and views can only increase over time, especially in those cases where individual videos are linked to other resources or for very popular social networking platforms such as Youtube.
Even though the distribution of the HIGHLIGHT videos, interviews and articles shall be considered as finished, spontaneous take-ups of editorial pieces and future downloads from the yourismediacenter shall not be considered concluded, thus, guaranteeing to the HIGHLIGHT stories additional future audience and viewers.
From November 2013 till December 2014 HIGHLIGHT videos, articles and interviews had 19,497 unique visitors. A part from the visitors on the youris.com website, part of these news were shared on the youris.com Facebook fanpage and the VNRs have been watched on the youris.com Youtube channel. Facebook viewers have been 5,759, Youtube viewers 8,907 and total Twitter external outreach counts 4,390,867: this last number is to be considered an estimate of possible users who could have viewed the content shared on Twitter and it is particularly interesting because it gives an overview of the outreach achievable through Twitter and, in general, social media.
The result concerning unique visitors on youris.com is to be considered satisfactory considering the expectations from the DoW (at least 45,760 unique visitors): however, this number was estimated taking into account the total unique visitors on youris.com website as whole, not focusing on HIGHLIGHT material only. Considering viewers also on Facebook and Youtube, the total outreach of the HIGHLIGHT stories grows to 34,163 viewers, which represent a relevant share of the previously mentioned number: moreover, an additional portion of online impact is given by web referrals from external platforms.
C. WEB REFERRALS
External web referrals are to be divided into two categories: multipliers with a syndication agreement and spontaneous take-ups.
To generate additional take-ups and boosting the visibility of HIGHLIGHT communication materials, the HIGHLIGHT distribution strategy has foreseen the exploitation of syndication agreements with leading scientific information multipliers, such as, AlphaGalileo, Cordis.Wire Phys.org and WorldNews.
It is possible to have an esteem of the number of visitors that viewed these contents from AlphaGalileo, Cordis.Wire Phys.org while WorldNews doesn’t share data on visitors.
On AlphaGalileo HIGHLIGHT stories had 67,548 visitors, on Cordis.Wire the news had 9,690 visitors and on Phys.org visitors were 191,310.
Overall, the sharing of articles on multipliers with syndication agreements gave more than 268,548 visitors.
D. SPONTANEOUS TAKE-UPS
The reporting for the spontaneous take-ups cannot be as precise as for the syndicated multipliers, since traffic data for all domains are not publicly available. Nevertheless, it is possible to gather a rough idea of the online diffusion of the contents: total take-ups of HIGHLIGHT material counts 2,472 times, with an average of 29 spontaneous take ups for each news piece.
It can be interesting to note that about 80% of these spontaneous take-ups happened via social media: 68% via Twitter and 12% via Facebook. The rest of take-ups happened mostly on news aggregation domains or blogs.
Summing together the take ups on syndicated multipliers and other spontaneous domains, we reach a total of 2,472 direct web referrals that have been multiplying the reach of the editorial contents of HIGHLIGHT. Compared to the objectives stated in the DOW - of 2,205 direct web referrals in total - it is possible to consider the result achieved and satisfactory.
E. YOURISMEDIACENTER
The yourismediacenter is the youris.com repository where journalists can freely download all VNRs published and distributed through the youris.com platform. VNRs are stored in the teaser and b-roll formats, both in HD (High Definition) and SD (Standard Definition): in addition, the teasers of the stories are available in 6 languages (English, Spanish, Polish, Italian, French, German).
The HIGHLIGHT stories are stored under the section “Health” of the yourismediacenter and they will be always available for future downloads and broadcasts by TV stations.
Monitoring and reporting the yourismediacenter downloads is an additional measure of the impact of the HIGHLIGHT stories outreach. The list of downloaded VNR is available since January 2014.
The HIGHLIGHT series recorded a total of 120 downloads from the yourismediacenter: this number can only grow over time, considering future downloads of the stories. To provide few examples, the HIGHLIGHT consortium has been acknowledged about future broadcasts on January 2015 about VASCUBONE story from SRF TV station and about PG Mreza (Serbia) broadcasting other HIGHLIGHT stories.
Contact: Mario Martinoli, Director, youris.com EEIG, rue des Colonies 11, B-1000 Brussels (Belgium) - publisher@youris.com