Voting opens for DW’s Bobs awards

The German international broadcaster Deutsche Welle is asking listeners to vote for the best online activism in its annual multilingual Bobs awards.

The Bobs – Best of Online Activism awards – has this year attracted more than 3,000 websites and online projects and voting is now open until 7 May 2014.

Organisers say an international jury selected the finalists for the People’s Choice Awards in the contest’s 14 languages from among blogs, websites, microblogs, videos and podcasts that contribute to promoting public debate by commenting on and analysing current events. All the nominees are presented with short descriptions at www.thebobs.com.

“All around the world, people are taking action online to promote freedom of expression and increased transparency across society,” says DW Director of Programming Gerda Meuer. “But the Internet is watched and controlled – and that is exactly what many of the entries in the contest address. 

Deutsche Welle created The Bobs in 2004, and over the past 10 years they have awarded online projects from around the world that stand for connectedness and transparency and which help Internet users move through the language barrier for a view of the global digital world.

The contest is conducted in 14 languages: Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, English, French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish and Ukrainian.