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SO-CLOSE

Enhancing Social Cohesion through Sharing the Cultural Heritage of Forced Migrations

The ambition of the project is to contribute to social cohesion and fight refugee marginalization or exclusion by facilitating the encounters between similar life stories, through the mediation of innovative digital and artistic tools. Based on theories of cultural heritage-making, exposing the commonalities of past and present experiences, listening to the target groups’ needs and through the development of a methodology template of co-creative design of replicable digital tools and cultural products, SO-CLOSE will improve social cohesion and promote mutual understanding between refugees and their local communities.

The resulting data and methodology will be used to develop several digital applications, for which purpose we have in our consortium strong technological partners with experience in this field. Working at the intersection of history, sociology, cultural studies, art and computer science, SO-CLOSE will design educational and cultural tools like interactive cookbooks, interactive documentaries based on immersive video recording, AI-powered Chatbots, interactive exhibitions based on personal memories and storytelling or an online platform, named Memory Center, built as a content aggregator and services platform. SO-CLOSE development will be implemented in four different pilot locations, selected due to their similarities with the present and for the actual existence of memory and intangible cultural heritage:

  • VDA, Krakow (Poland)
  • Trikeri Island Concentration Camp (Greece)
  • MUME de l’Exili (Spain)
  • MONTE Marzabotto (Italy)

PUBLICATIONS

  1. Stathopoulos EA, Karageorgiadis AI, Kokkalas A, Diplaris S, Vrochidis S, Kompatsiaris I. A Query Expansion Benchmark on Social Media Information Retrieval: Which Methodology Performs Best and Aligns with Semantics? Computers. 2023; 12(6):119. https://doi.org/10.3390/computers12060119 OPEN ACCESS
  2. E.A. Stathopoulos, A.I. Karageorgiadis, A. Kokkalas, S. Diplaris, S. Vrochidis, and I. Kompatsiaris, "Social Media and Web Sensing with Semantic Integration on the Refugee Crisis", in IEEE 17th International Workshop on Semantic and Social Media Adaptation & Personalization (SMAP), 3-4 November 2022, Online. DOI: 10.1109/SMAP56125.2022.9942201. © 2022 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.
  3. Ntioudis D, Masa P, Karakostas A, Meditskos G, Vrochidis S, Kompatsiaris I. Ontology-Based Personalized Job Recommendation Framework for Migrants and Refugees. Big Data and Cognitive Computing. 2022; 6(4):120. DOI:10.3390/bdcc6040120