The 2021 Media and Democracy Karol Jakubowicz Award was granted to professor Karen Donders for raising the importance of a healthy public service media in today’s democracies. She will donate the prize money of €1500 to VUB’s central library.
Six publications by scholars from Belgium, Croatia, Hungary, Poland, the United Kingdom and the United States of America were nominated for this year’s edition of the Media and Democracy Karol Jakubowicz Award. The Award was granted to Public Service Media and the Law: Theory and Practice in Europe (Routledge 2021) – a recent book by VUB professor Karen Donders.
Donation to VUB’s central library
The award comes with a prize of 7000 zloty (€1500). Professor Donders donates this prize to the VUB library to purchase works related to public broadcasting.
About Karen Donders
Professor Karen Donders is the Director of Public Value at Vlaamse Radio- en Televisieomroeporganisatie (VRT), the public broadcasting service in Flanders. Prior to joining VRT, she worked as a full professor at Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Her previous publications include monographs, edited collections, and scholarly papers on the European media policy and innovation in public service media.
About the award
The goal of the Award is to support scholars who contribute to studies on democracy, human rights, media ethics, media policy and public service media.
The Media and Democracy Karol Jakubowicz Award was established in 2018 by Małgorzata Semil-Jakubowicz. It is granted to outstanding contributions in the areas of scientific interests of Karol Jakubowicz, who was a Polish academic in the fields of journalism and communication science. He was instrumental in guiding the development of media legislation in Eastern Europe in the 1990s.
The Polish Communication Association is the institutional partner of the award.