The Media and Democracy Karol Jakubowicz Award 2024

The Selection Committee affiliated with the Polish Communication Association has launched the submissions for the 7 th Edition of the Media and Democracy Karol Jakubowicz Award. Once again, the Editors and Associate Editors of the “Central European Journal of Communication” (CEJC) actively recommend and nominate the scholarly publications.

The Media and Democracy Karol Jakubowicz Award aims to support and recognize outstanding scholarly contributions in democracy, human rights, media ethics, media policy and public service media – the areas of interest of dr. Karol Jakubowicz (1941–2013). The Award was established by Małgorzata Semil-Jakubowicz and the Polish Communication Association. Since 2018, it was granted to Christian S. Nissen (former CEO of the Danish Broadcasting Corporation), Maria Nowina Konopka (Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland), Jakub Nowak (Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin, Poland), Małgorzata Adamik-Szysiak (Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin, Poland), Maria Łoszewska-Ołowska (University of Warsaw, Poland), Agnieszka Walecka-Rynduch (Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland), Karen Donders (VRT; Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium), Urszula Doliwa (University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn, Poland) and Slavko Splichal (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia).

Over the years, the idea of the Award has become international with the support of the Leadership Team of the International Association of Public Service Media Researchers (IAPMR), alongside the Editors and Associate Editors of the “Central European Journal of Communication”. Since 2021 the Award has been organized in collaboration with the Journalism Education Foundation (Polish: Fundacja Szkolnictwo Dziennikarskie).

The Selection Committee, the previous Award winners, and the networks of IAMPR and CEJC are tasked to recommend and nominate scholarly works published in 2023 and 2024; all the submissions will be evaluated via three highly interwoven criteria:

methodological correctness,
contribution to media knowledge,
potential impact on democratic society.

The list of this year’s nominees will be published in April 2024, while the Award winner will be traditionally announced on April 28, the day of the passing of dr. Karol Jakubowicz.

Following this example, the Selection Committee is also considering awarding a special award in 2024 for a publication of a journalistic and popularizing nature, resonating socially in an area close to the Patron of the Award: media and democracy. In 2023, the Selection Committee awarded the excellence of Wieczny powrót Dreyfusa (Eng. Dreyfus: A Perpetual Comeback), a book by Jolanta Kurska, with a special Media and Democracy Karol Jakubowicz Award.

More information about the previous editions can be found on the website of the Polish Communication Association.

_{Authors: Dagmara Sidyk-Furman and Michał Głowacki}

_{Cover image: Maja Sosnowska}