The Jessie McCanse Award established in 1987 in honor of one of IC4ML’s co-founders is given for an individual’s dedication and contribution to the field of media literacy education over a sustained period of at least ten years in a leadership role. It honors individuals whose contributions exemplify Jessie’s positive philosophy, her principles of fairness and ethical practices, her creativity, and her role as a collaborative bridge builder.
In 2026, one of our two honorees that we celebrated in Rome at the IMLRS Conference was Thomas A. Bauer. He is a true bridge-builder whose work connects disciplines and cultures, demonstrating how media and communication can empower people, strengthen civic participation, and contribute to a more just and equitable society. He is the Professor Emeritus at the Department of Communication at University of Vienna, Austria and has an impressive body of work that crosses the globe. We invite you to learn more about Thomas through the nomination letter from Remzie Shahini-Hoxhaj and tributes from Alexandre Le Voci Sayad and Van Vu, which vividly illustrate how he exemplifies the spirit of the Jesse McCanse Award.
Professor Thomas A. Bauer’s Nomination for the Jessie McCanse Award from Remzie Shahini-Hoxhaj
I hereby nominate Professor Thomas A. Bauer, Dr. phil., Dr. h.c. for the Jessie McCanse Award, a distinction that recognizes transformative contributions to media literacy, communication research, and global citizenship education.
For almost fifty years, Professor Bauer has been one of the most important academics in Europe in the areas of communication theory, media literacy and media cultural studies. Several generations of scholars, instructors, and practitioners have been influenced by his academic leadership at the University of Vienna, where he has been a full professor for Audio-Visual Media from 1993 and thereafter as professor emeritus. Through the integration of theory, education, and societal duty, his work has continuously improved an epistemological understanding of communication.
In addition to establishing media literacy within a larger framework of public discourse, democratic engagement, and intercultural understanding, Professor Bauer is well acknowledged for his groundbreaking definition of communication as a cultural activity. For academics working at the nexus of communication, culture, and social change, his masterpiece, Kommunikation wissenschaftlich denken. Perspektiven einer kontextuellen Theorie gesellschaftlicher Verständigung (Böllau, 2014), has become a fundamental classic. Additionally, in German- speaking academic settings, his three-volume previous book, Medienpädagogik. Einfürung und Grundlegung (Böllau, 1980), continues to be a mainstay of media literacy.
Professor Bauer has shown a remarkable dedication to creative media practice in addition to his theoretical achievements. He played a key role in the creation of alternative public sphere platforms like OKTO Community TV Vienna, as well as in the promotion of experimental student media initiatives like u-tv and u-ton, which offered fresh approaches to media democratization, civic engagement, and participatory communication at the university level. These programs uphold Jessie McCanse’s legacy of strengthening communities via inclusive communication and media literacy.
His wide-ranging international partnerships, which span throughout Europe, Southeast Asia, Latin America, Brazil, the Middle East, China, and the United States, demonstrate a lifelong commitment to strengthening international academic networks and promoting the intercultural aspects of media literacy. He has promoted media literacy as a crucial element of societal growth and policy innovation as the scientific coordinator of many worldwide initiatives on social media culture, health communication, and environmental sustainability.
Professor Bauer’s dedication to advancing public service principles in communication and media education is further demonstrated by his many years of service as President of the European Society for Education and Communication (ESEC) and his honorary president at OKTO Community TV. He has received recognition for his work all across the world, including an honorary doctorate from the Academy of Journalism in Hanoi.The Jessie McCanse Award aims to recognize those whose efforts empower communities and change the media literacy environment. In addition to contributing to the field’s scholarly underpinnings, Professor Bauer has transformed those underpinnings into long-lasting, socially significant action. Classrooms, civic society, policy circles, and global networks devoted to democratic communication all exhibit his impact.
I nominate Professor Thomas A. Bauer for the Jessie McCanse Award for these reasons, and I have complete faith in the influence of his scholarly and practical achievements. His career is an excellent representation of the values, vision, and worldwide reach that this award is intended to honor.
The Austrian Who Cannot Be Explained in Words
By Alexandre Le Voci Sayad
In the German language there are words that do not merely designate; they contain entire worlds. They are concepts that resist hasty equivalence—terms that, in naming, integrate, embrace, and transcend. Perhaps for this reason—but not for this reason alone—the presence and work of Thomas A. Bauer have been so decisive for the field of Media and Information Literacy.
More than refining its epistemological grounding as a form of social praxis, Professor Bauer excavated, with rigor and subtlety, the historical and ethical meaning of mediation in human life. He reached what every scholar secretly aspires to encounter: the bedrock of thought—Philosophy, the mother and foundation of all disciplines.
To walk beside Thomas is itself a philosophical exercise: to walk and to think. I remember the damp, frozen streets of Kristiansand, in southern Norway, where I learned from him something that his writings only suggested. The word was Bildung. Not mere instruction, but self-formation—a singular and intransferable process of becoming fully human.
With characteristic generosity, he observed that a lecture I had just delivered touched upon this very dimension. And then I understood: Media and Information Literacy, in its highest expression, is also a practice of Bildung—a pathway through which the individual forms himself or herself in critical relationship with the symbolic world that surrounds us.
Bildung cannot be fully translated outside the German language. I searched for equivalents, consulted dictionaries, and explored interpretations. In the end, I realized that the key was not in the word alone, but in the life that embodies it. Thomas has made of his research and his contribution to this field a lifelong exercise in Bildung. His trajectory demonstrates that knowledge neither exhausts itself in technique nor dissolves into immediate utility; it fulfills itself in the enduring tension between concept and world, between language and ethical responsibility.
Without Thomas, Media and Information Literacy might have remained confined as concept and practice. It was his philosophical depth that helped elevate it to the status of epistemology, granting it coherence and horizon. The lens through which we see and create the world.
Thomas is the Austrian who cannot be explained in words—just as certain German words cannot be translated without loss. He is, in himself, a being of language: one who never separates thought from social impact, yet who refuses to surrender knowledge to simplification. He questions concepts, probes their limits, and insists upon the ethical responsibility of discourse.
To have him near is a rare privilege. In an age of hurried simplifications, his presence reminds us that thinking is a moral act—and that self-formation is the task of a lifetime. A Bildung indeed.
Tribute to Professor Thomas A. Bauer by Assoc Professor Van Vu, Director of Scientific Information, Academy of Journalism and Communication, Vietnam
I have known Thomas Bauer since 2013 as a person, friend and professor. We started the cooperation between the Academy of Journalism and Communication and University of Vienna through a series of international conferences, seminars and exchanges. Thomas worked tirelessly for this cooperation with his health, heart and mind.
Words are not enough to describe how much he had contributed to this verysuccessful and fruitful cooperation model. He travelled between Vienna and Hanoi and other Southeast Asian countries to develop a network of cooperation. He startedthe ambitious MEDLIT project, involving several universities in Europe and Asia to study media literacy as an agent for social development.
For his excellent academic contribution, he was awarded the honorary doctorate degree of AJC. Thomas once told me that the best medal you can wear is your heart. He did what he said. AJC and I gave him our heart as the medal and the honorary doctorate degree is just a spiritual symbol of recognition.
Words are not enough to describe how much he had contributed to this very successful and fruitful cooperation model. When it comes to words, he always surprised people with his strange ideas. It was a real challenge for lecturers at AJC to translate his lectures (Nobody wants to do this. I am sorry, Thomas.)
He told me he found that English words are not enough to explain his ideas. He told me the first time we met in Vienna that “You are born for more”. What is more? To live for international exchange. To foster academic development. To serve people with intellectuality and integrity. To do meaningful things without expecting any forms of recognition. So let me say to my very dear friend and professor loud and clear: “Thomas, you are born for more. And more.”
Leave a Reply