Picture Credits: Maja Sosnowska
IAPMR congratulates Natalie Fenton on winning the 2026 Media and Democracy Karol Jakubowicz Award. Fenton, who is a Professor of Media and Communications at Godsmiths, University of London, received the award for her monograph Democratic Delusions: How the Media Hollows Out Democracy and What We Can Do About It (Polity, 2025).
The selection committee praised the interdisciplinary and critical analysis of the relationship between media systems and contemporary democracy, challenging dominant assumptions about the role of media in democratic societies and proposing alternative models of media organization and ownership. Fenton thereby points to directions for institutional reform and media policy.
A Special Media and Democracy Karol Jakubowicz Award was granted to tech journalist Sylwia Czubkowska for her book Bóg techy. Jak wielkie firmy technologiczne przejmują władzę nad Polską i światem (Eng. God Tech: How Big Tech Companies Are Taking Over Poland and the World; Wydawnictwo Znak, 2025).
The following authors and publications were also nominated for the award:
- Péter Bajomi-Lázár & Dalma Boldog, Journalism Ethics in Eastern Europe (Anthem Press, 2026)
- Nico Carpentier & Jeffrey Wimmer, Democracy and Media in Europe: A Discursive-Material Approach (Taylor & Francis, 2025)
- Filip Trbojević, Peter Berglez, Dina Vozab, Mart Ots & Zrinjka Peruško, Quality of Journalism and Media Freedom in Europe: The fsQCA Approach (Central European Journal of Communication, 2025)
- Marína Urbániková, Klára Smejkal, Iveta Jansová & Lenka Waschková Císařová, Reimagining Public Service Media: Navigating Change and Exploring Public Consensus in the Czech Republic (Routledge, 2026)
More information can be found on the website of the Polish Communication Association. IAPMR sits on the selection committee of the award. Karol Jakubowicz (1941-2013) was one of the most recognised experts on media freedom in Europe and one of the most recognised Polish researchers in the field of communication and media.