The Content and Technology Laboratory (The C&T Laboratory)
The Content and Technology Laboratory began its work at the Faculty of Journalism on September 1, 2021. The C&T Laboratory at the Department of New Media (Faculty of Journalism) is a structural unit of the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv that expands the educational opportunities for journalism students with regard to creating and promoting up-to-date digital content. The laboratory was established as a result of the participation of the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv in the Erasmus+KA2 project “Journalism Education for Democracy in Ukraine” (lasting from 2018 to 2022).
The C&T Lab serves as a platform for meetings with online journalists, bloggers, and new media researchers. The Lab holds meetings with interesting speakers almost every week, providing a great opportunity for students to engage in diverse learning experiences based on practical cases.
The Content and Technology Laboratory is a sustainable development result of the DESTIN project, which will help integrate practical cases into the educational process.
The Institute of Media Ecology
The Institute of Media Ecology was established according to the decision of the Learned Council of the Ivan Franko National University of L’viv in June 1999. It is worth mentioning here that emphasis is laid on non-traditional ecology, its object of investigation being the informational environment created by mass media. The Institute focuses on the problem of the noosphere pollution, description, comparative analysis, and the elaboration of the ways of neutralization of pathogenic information flows, screen violence, pornography, hyper advertisement, and propaganda. The Institute treats media ecology as the synthesis of philosophical, academic, and purely applied trends connected with the neutralization of pathogenic information flows. That is why the Institute, from the first days of its activity, follows three research trends:
- media philosophical (philosophical contemplation of the influence of mass media, in particular, media technology, upon our psyche and culture);
- media critical (the analysis of media discourse for professionals);
- media ecological (media ecology differs from journalist education in that it is aimed not only at media business training, but also at the stimulation of “psychological immunity” of public against those media threats which are connected with propaganda and falsification, pornography and screen violence. Media education is something like an instruction manual on how to use media).
Since such research themes require an interdisciplinary approach, during the first year of its existence, the Institute collected the publications in the volume “Avoiding the Apocalypses,” which offer the wide vision of media ecology problems.