Application Deadline: March 3rd 2016
Since 2004, The Bobs awards honor bloggers, activists and journalists in 14 languages that champion the open exchange of ideas, freedom of expression and human rights on the Internet.
The Bobs are the only global, international award honoring creative and brave projects online that cross language and cultural barriers and thereby showcases the best of what the ever-expanding World Wide Web has to offer.
The competition’s languages are: Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, English, French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, and Ukrainian.
Submissions are open to anyone using the internet and don’t cost a single penny, but everything submitted to The Bobs has to be in one of the contest’s 14 languages (they’re Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, English, French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish and Ukrainian).
There are four multilingual categories at #thebobs16 – these are the places where projects from around the world compete for laurels as the winners of the Jury Award, handed out by an independent, international jury, and Users’ Award, whose winners will be decided in an online vote. Here are the four multilingual categories:
- Social Change
- Tech for Good
- Arts and Culture
- Citizen Journalism
Requirements:
- Only projects and sites in The Bobs 14 languages can be submitted to the competition. The languages are: Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, English, French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, and Ukrainian.
- You may submit your own site or project.
- Websites must be accessible to the public.
- Websites from the Deutsche Welle or its employees are not allowed in the competition.
- Websites in which jury members are closely and directly involved are not allowed in the competition.
- We do not accept submissions that contain or link to any form of insulting, racist, sexist or in any other way discriminatory or obscene content. Sites or projects containing religious fundamentalism, political extremism, anti-Semitism or xenophobic content are not allowed in the competition.
- To participate in the contest, a site need only be submitted to The Bobs once. The number of times a site is submitted does not influence its chance of advancing to the next round or its chance of winning.
Benefits:
- All the winners of The Bobs 2016 will be announced in Berlin in early May.
- A ceremony for the winners of the Jury Awards and the Freedom of Speech Award will take place on June 14 in Bonn, Germany, as part of the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum.
Criteria:
Depending on the category, some factors will be given more weight than others. Content, added value, design and functionality will all come under discussion during the judging process.
Here are the bullet points the jury will use in making their evaluations:
The Big Idea
- The notion behind the site, project or initiative and its implementation
- Relevance to society at large
- Audience-appropriate explanatory tone
- Language style
- Ongoing engagement with topics and users
- Transparency and authenticity
Creativity
- Visual originality and skill at taking advantage of the possibilities offered by the Internet
Innovation
- Site’s novelty / uniqueness
For More Information:
Visit the Official Webpage of the Deutsche Welle Best of Online Journalism (BOBS) Contest 2016