As the 21st century gathers pace, the most advanced technologies are making their way into the most diverse fields, creating added value and opening up new opportunities. They are also replacing people with headphones, listening to radio and television programs for hours and turning spoken words into written text.
For some time now, the media monitoring and analysis company “Mediaskopas,” the first in Lithuania to carry out such work, has been helped by artificial intelligence — an automatic Lithuanian speech recognition system created by Estonian scientists working at the Cybernetics Institute at Tallinn University of Technology, according to a press release.
This technology not only turns audio into text almost in real time, but also serves search brilliantly — by entering a word or phrase, the system finds the exact places in TV and radio programs where the searched text was spoken, giving the user the opportunity to review the video and audio material relevant to them.
“What matters is not only the verbal information conveyed in the news or other programs, but also how it is presented — the visuals, the voice, the intonation. Often, a person wants to see and hear the exact point where they, their company, or facts important to them were mentioned. In addition, speech recognition technologies make it possible to cover practically the entire airtime. A person no longer needs to watch or listen to the news themselves. They also have the opportunity to create a retrospective view — to find out what was said about one topic or another before, what arguments were presented. And that is a huge advantage,” says Jūratė Stankuvienė, Director of Mediaskopas.
According to her, it was Sven-Erik Heinsoo, the CEO of the group of companies “Balti Meediamonitooringu Grupp OÜ,” which owns the company “Mediaskopas” in Lithuania, who first came up with the idea of using scientists and adapting speech recognition technologies to monitor TV and radio programs. The system designed for Estonian, which launched earlier than the Lithuanian one, is currently used by more than 90 percent of the clients of the Estonian media monitoring and research company belonging to this group. The range of users in both countries is very broad: from policymakers and businesspeople to representatives of the Church.
The head of Mediaskopas emphasizes that the automatic speech recognition system, like the other technologies used by the company — text messages as soon as relevant information appears, a fast and convenient search and analysis tool — makes it possible to monitor communication parameters in real time and respond to changes immediately.
“For our clients, we are like a drone over the media and social media landscape — if we see something important for them, we can zoom in and highlight it. We also provide the opportunity to see how image, public opinion, crisis management, and many other parameters are shaped. This is important and useful for reputation management, trend monitoring, business intelligence, marketing, and staffing. Thanks to innovative technologies, we can now help in many ways, also in gaining a competitive advantage,” says Jūratė Stankuvienė.
Mediaskopas is the largest company in Lithuania providing media monitoring and analysis solutions. It started its operations in 1998 and currently has more than 250 clients — Lithuanian and foreign business entities as well as public institutions. In 2014, after the Estonian group of companies “Balti Meediamonitooringu Grupp OÜ” acquired Mediaskopas, the company became part of this group, which operates the only network of media monitoring and analysis companies in the Baltic States. Mediaskopas provides media monitoring and analysis services in Lithuania and, together with partners, also in Latvia and Estonia. Membership in the International Federation of Press Clipping and Media Monitoring Agencies (FIBEP) gives the company the opportunity to review media in other foreign countries.
