OBJECTIVES

The main objective is to set up and deploy a secure and trusted data space to enable media organisations active in all media sub-sectors to cooperate by sharing and accessing data in a mutually advantageous manner and in full compliance with the data protection legislation. By providing the means for enhanced data-based collaboration, the data space should open new opportunities for the media secto with a view to innovating, transforming and addressing existing and new challenges of the digital economy (such as regaining competitiveness in the face of online platforms).

The data space should combine a technical infrastructure with governance mechanisms to ensure an easy and secure cross-border access to key datasets in the media sector. Data interoperability will be a key characteristic of the infrastructure. The data space should deploy trust mechanisms (such as security and privacy by design) and develop data services matching European values, in particular ethics, equality and diversity.

The data space infrastructure should boost the re-use of data for innovative content (for example, in entertainment, education, and news) production, curation,  circulation and distribution across Europe. The data should be available to both public service media and commercial media operators, whether large or small, start-ups or established players.

The media data space should be designed in such a way as to encourage the EU media stakeholders to embrace data-driven business models and pool together increasing sets of data and collaborate to set up new products and formats targeting expanded audiences in multiple languages. By providing access to larger datasets, the media ecosystem would be better equipped to scale up.

In line with the European Data Strategy, the media data space should connect subdataspaces from various media related sectors to form and look for links with other European data spaces, as relevant.

SCOPE

The general scope, features and principles of a common European data space are to be found in the Commission Staff Working Document on Common European Data Spaces.

The media data space will comprise the following three layers:

• Infrastructure

The infrastructure layer plays a fundamental role in this initiative. It will deploy, for the entire media value chain, the enabling technologies and underlying structural components to design, implement and operate a robust data space, as well as the required elements for data governance, cooperation readiness and setting of standards. More specifically, the project will, among others, define the conditions for sharing and using the data, including intellectual property (IP) and licensing options (including fees, if any), data models and metadata schemes, data protection, privacy, competition rules, workflow management and transaction functionalities.

The media sector comprises a number of heterogeneous fields and sub-sectors.

Therefore, several sub-spaces are likely to be initial building blocks for the European media data space, such as news media, audio-visual content sharing, immersive content (through XR technologies), film production and gaming. Consequently, special emphasis should be put on interoperability (semantic, technical and IP) and creation of connections between these sub-areas through credible governance and coordination systems, and appropriate technical architecture reflecting these different building blocks.

In order to ensure the medium and long-term re-use of data of the media data space, content formats and metadata structures will take account, to the extent possible, of the use of European open source, international or pan-industry-accepted standards. The media data space will make use of EU computing and/or storage infrastructure. 

• Applications, tools and services

For the pooling, processing and sharing of data, the project will see to the development of technical and innovative tools to operationalise the platform, including, for example, modules and cloud-based services for automatic translation, neutral search, editing tools, data analysis, workflow tools, transaction mechanisms, social media interaction, news aggregation and content-driven modules.

The media data space will provide tools and services such as, but not limited to tools for media data transaction preserving data ownership, tools for data analytics, services for financial transactions based on the data usage (e.g. using blockchain), data format transformation services (where applicable), services for immersive content creation (including AI elements), services to develop income from advertising/subscription/copyright/other licenses, services to facilitate access to computing resources for creative SMEs.

• Data

Creators, producers, and distributors host relevant media data, such as content, meta-data or audience data. This data, as well as other types of data on users’ behaviours, can be shared within the media data space. This might be useful to create content better tailored to consumer needs and distribute it more efficiently. Other examples of data that could be shared include user consumption data, 3D animation models, production meta-data, trained AI models.

The media data space should aim at offering data in as many EU official languages and media markets as possible.

The stakeholders will agree on the relevant data formats to be used for data exchange within the media data space and with other data spaces.

The media data space should overall support the curation, joint-production and circulation of news and media content and its adaptation to different audience targets and consumer preferences.

Synergies and interconnections
The project selected for the deployment of the European media data space will be in full compliance with the European Data Spaces Technical Framework and will make use of the SIMPL middleware5. It will also liaise with the Data Spaces Support Centre6 (see topic DIGITAL-2021-CLOUD-AI-01-SUPPCENTRE) and the Alliance for Industrial Data, Cloud and Edge. It will coordinate and collaborate with other projects in the European common data space ecosystem This will ensure the integration of existing standards, the interoperability and portability across infrastructure, applications and data.

Synergies with the work done by the European Digital Media Observatory and its national hubs for online content distribution and findability will also be established.

Furthermore, the project should explore links with other data spaces (e.g. data spaces for cultural heritage, tourism, languages) or produced by creative/ industrial sectors (e.g. fashion, design, retail, automotive).

The selected proposal should create synergies, to the extent possible, with the results of any EU-funded actions that could be useful for the development of a common European media data space, for example HORIZON-CL4-2021-HUMAN-01-06: Innovation for Media, including eXtended Reality (IA),. Moreover, it will seek to include any relevant national or regional media initiatives meant to pool, share and process media-related data across organisations in the Member States.

OUTCOMES AND DELIVERABLES

Outcomes

• Strengthen the competitiveness of the media industry at global level through an expanding data-based cooperation between players of all sizes and through innovative solutions meant to ultimately bring in new growth perspectives for the media companies
• Improve the availability, quality and interoperability of data both within the media ecosystem and across sectors.
• Facilitate the emergence of new business models and their uptake by traditional and new media, thereby improving citizens’ access to broadly sourced information,
• Contribute to Europe’s digital autonomy, as well as strengthen citizens’ participation in the public sphere by offering them to access online media content of their choice, from around the EU and in multiple languages.

Deliverables

• An EU-based cloud-hosted interoperable infrastructure for the media industry, which should be designed based the inputs of the broad stakeholder community and on the concept of a common European data space described in the Staff Working Document, as well as in compliance with the European Data Spaces Technical Framework.
• The deployment of a variety of applications, tools and services to allow for the pooling, processing and sharing of data by an open number of media organisations across the EU, as well as for the federation of energy-efficient and trustworthy cloud capacities and related services. The project will also offer services to facilitate access to computing resources for creative SMEs.
• Interconnections with similar existing data spaces within the Union, to the extent possible, and integration of the digital solutions for media developed under EU-funded programmes.
• A sandbox environment and interface services to foster pilots and host innovative media services developed through initiatives other than Digital Europe, such as Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe will be developed.
• The creation of a data governance framework adapted to the media ecosystem and compatible with the relevant EU legislation, which determine, in a transparent and fair way, the rights of access to and processing of the data.
• The development of a business plan to secure the sustainability and the enlargement of the media data space in the context of its integration into the EU’s growing data space environment.

KPIs TO MEASURE OUTCOMES AND DELIVERABLES 

Applicants are invited to describe in the proposal the concrete methodology that they will put in place and the full range of activities contemplated for each of the objectives presented. The work plan should detail how the project objectives will be achieved and provide concrete milestones, as well as relevant KPIs for each objective.

The KPIs will include, at least:

• Number of relevant media stakeholders, including SMEs, coming from different EU and associated countries participating in the media data space initiative
• Number of media sub-sectors represented by stakeholders (target should be at least 2)
• Number of datasets (content, data and metadata) available to produce new products and formats, in different EU languages and EU markets.

TARGETED STAKEHOLDERS

The Consortium will ideally be composed of a mix of representative partners coming from among the technology providers and tech start-ups on one hand, while ensuring, on the hand, the representativeness of the media ecosystem, to the largest extent possible, i.e. public and private European publishers, broadcasters, radios, advertising companies, media SMEs, content creators and start-ups, producers and distributors. 

TYPE OF ACTION AND FUNDING RATE

Simple grants - 50% funding rate.

SPECIFIC TOPIC CONDITIONS

• For this topic, multi-beneficiary applications are mandatory and specific conditions for the consortium composition apply (see section 6)
• For this topic, following reimbursement option for equipment costs applies: depreciation and full cost for listed equipment (see section 10)
• The following parts of the award criteria in section 9 are exceptionally NOT applicable for this topic:
  • extent to which the proposal can overcome financial obstacles such as the lack of market finance
  • extent to which the proposal addresses environmental sustainability and the European Green Deal goals, in terms of direct effects and/or in awareness of environmental effects.