The BOBS Award gives recognition to bloggers, activists and journalists who champion freedom of expression, human rights and the free exchange of ideas on the website: with nominations now in, it is time for the public to cast its vote.
The Bobs Awards 2016, a Deutsche Welle initiative that has been recognising outstanding contributions by bloggers and online activists for 12 years and is the only international award of its kind, is in full swing. For its current edition, the jury has selected 126 out of over 2000 nominations and the public is now invited to cast its vote on its favourite nominees.
Up for grabs (and open to the public vote) are awards in 14 language categories: Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, English, French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, and Ukrainian.
The winners of an additional four multilingual categories – Social Change, Tech for Good, Arts and Culture, and Citizen Journalism – are also to be selected by an international jury.
Jury members include journalists, bloggers and human rights campaigners, such as Alexey Kovalev, a journalist who has been analysing Russian media and uncovering its propaganda, Mona Kareem, a New York-based journalist and editor of Migrant-rights.org, an organisation concerned with the conditions of migrant workers in the Middle East, and Rafida Bonya Ahmed, a campaigner for freedom of expression in Bangladesh whose blog platform Mukto Mona was also the winner of last year’s Social Change category.
The jury will also select the winner of the Deutsche Welle Freedom of Speech Award, also to be given out during The Bobs 2016. Last year, this award went to imprisoned blogger Raif Badawi from Saudi Arabia.
You can take a glimpse at last year’s winners here, and you can cast your vote here – but remember, voting closes 2 May, 2016!
