REIsearch launches its third campaign to assess and promote the digital skills of Europeans

The Reisearch launches its third campaign to assess and promote the digital skills of Europeans and unveils a new platform to expand the dialogue between researchers, citizens and professionals.

REIsearch has launched its third citizen and media engagement campaign aimed at assessing and improving the digital competences of European citizens. The campaign runs in six languages (English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish) and envolves eight of the largest media organisations (Der Standard, El País, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Les Èchos, Irish Times, Il Sole24ore, Público and Elsevier). This initiative follows in the steps of the 2016 endeavour on chronic diseases and the 2017 one on the Internet of the future which engaged more than 60.000 people each. This year’s campaign aims to envolve an even higher share of Europeans through a new and gamified approach allowing online users to asses their level of “nerdiness” and discovering if they are a Steve Jobs like digital guru or a Mr Bean of the digital world. The game, dubbed iNerd, may be played at game.reisearch.eu and on all media partners sites, is both entertaining and informative. Players are encoraged to explore their knowledge of four key areas of the digital world: big data and artificial intelligence, social media and Internet of things earning scores, profiles and badges they may share online. Upon completion of each session (iNerd can be played multiple times to test one’s improvements) the player’s score will also lead him to a selection of explanatory videos and articles meant to improve his weaker spots. The videos, 24 in total, have been produced by REIsearch and feature eight leading european experts in the fields of big data and Ai, social and new media, Internet of things as well as privacy and cybersecurity. The campaign will be significantly promoted online through the hashtag: #hownerdyareyou.

Atomium, the organization promoting REIsearch, has also unveiled a new version of the platform featuring several upgrades and a new line of video talks on big data and Ai, IoT, social and new media, cybersecurity and privacy.

Among the most notable new functions of the platform is the “ask a researcher” function allowing users to have their questions automatically routed to the most competent researchers and, once answers are ready, to index them and recall them when asked again. Semantic search engine functions has been implemented to help route questions to the most appropriate researchers.

The aim of the third REIsearch campaign is to start a reliable and authoritative debate on digital competences (from media literacy to privacy and big data), bringing together researchers, media, policy-makers and citizens from all across Europe. This will allow to support the European Commission and Parliament in shaping its future strategies to drive an inclusive development of the digital sphere in the next years via regulation, policy action and funding.

REIsearch is a non-profit European initiative co-funded by the European Commission to demonstrate how a technological tool, coupled to a broad network of leading media, research institutions, researchers, civil society organisations, and citizens, can help policy makers to make better use of all knowledge and experience – wherever it may come from – to make better decisions, based on evidence and experience, for the benefit of society as a whole.

REIsearch is promoted by Atomium – European Institute for Science, Media and Democracy, launched seven years ago at the European Parliament by the former President of France Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and by Michelangelo Baracchi Bonvicini, today Honorary President and President of the Institute. REIsearch’s endevour’s have been publicly endoresd by European Commission’s President, Jean-Claude Juncker commented who said: “Innovation and new scientific discoveries are improving people’s lives and making our economy more competitive. Science should be open and freed from its traditional ivory tower; to be discussed, submitted to critique and fed with new perspectives. That’s why I warmly welcome efforts such as the REIsearch initiative to get Europeans engaged in the debate about science and research and inspire fresh ideas about how to solve some of our society’s most pressing problems”.

Atomium-EISMD