After the announcement of the winners at the award presentation ceremony on Thursday, President of the National Media and Infocommunications Authority (NMHH) Monika Karas presented the awards for the winning student papers of the government and law section of the National Conference of Scientific Students’ Associations (OTDK) organised by the Institute of Media Sciences of the National Media and Infocommunications Authority (MTMI) last summer. President Karas emphasised that the awards represent not only an acknowledgement of the value-creating young generation but also exciting opportunities for the infocommunications and media markets of the future. She underlined that NMHH has spearheaded talent management for years, and this effort has been marked, among others, by the foundation of New Media Culture Creative Labs at five Hungarian universities.

NMHH’s sponsorship of the infocommunications law and media law papers submitted to the Infocommunications and Media Law Section of OTDK in the context of a prestigious, national biannual contest is designed to boost student research projects in the fields of media or infocommunications law, and provide an opportunity for talented students to present their innovative research findings to professionals and establish personal contacts with those active in the fields of media and infocommunications.

The contest had a budget of over HUF 1 million earmarked, which the panel of judges distributed among the authors of the top 10 papers in the form of a money award of HUF 110,000 per student. The competition essays covered a wide variety of topics from the responsibility of online search engines for content published by others, privacy protection in the processing of electronic information, the fate of a person’s online data after his or her death and the Hungarian regulations on online gambling to the vulnerability of the diversity of the Hungarian media market to corporate giants emerging as a result of market concentration. The papers also sought answers to questions like who can be held accountable for Internet comments, how co-regulation works in Hungary and abroad and even offered an outlook to the regulation of the freedom of the press throughout World War One. Others studied the NATO aspects of military frequency management, the consequences of the uniformed information bubble instilled by Google and Facebook and shaping mainstream public opinion, the role of the Internet in the freedom of expression and the effects of Pulitzer Prize winning newspaper articles in shaping society.

Award winners: János Ancsin, Tünde Csudai, Laura Hegedűs and Roland Kelemen from Széchenyi István University, Diána Dobrodinszky from the University of Szeged, Mátyás Környei and Eszter Tatay from the University of Pécs, Szabolcs Németh from Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary, Soma Török from Pázmány Péter Catholic University and Enikő Végvári from the National University of Public Service. Book package awards were given to Annamária Beláz and Péter Szegedi from the National University of Public Service. Recipients of the consultant awards were Klára Gellén Blazovich, Balázs Budai, János Kálmán, Péter Mezei, Anett Pogácsás, Péter Smuk, Márton Sulyok, Gergely László Szőke and András Tóth.

The panel of judges were all members of the staff at NMHH: communications legal consultant Balázs Bartóky-Gönczy, Media Council member András Koltay, MTMI Director Levente Nyakas and media legal consultant Tamás Szikora.

Students were required to submit their papers in the NMHH contest to the Institute of Media Sciences by 1 December 2014. Entry conditions did not require the OTDK paper to finish in the last, national round of the competition but only that the essay had to be validated as suitable for nomination.  The primary selection criterion for the consultants awarded with a HUF 40,000 prize was that their students had to finish in the national finals of OTDK. The Institute of Media Sciences of the National Media and Infocommunications Authority organised the first similar contest in 2012. Once the OTDK contest is finished in late March, the unabridged versions of the awarded papers will be available on the website of the Institute of Media Sciences of NMHH at www.mtmi.hu.

Awarded students:

Awarded consultants:

• Dr. András Tóth, head of department, KRE-ÁJK
• Dr. Balázs Benjámin Budai, PhD, associate professor
• Dr. Gergely László Szőke, PTE ÁJK
• dr. János Kálmán, junior assistant professor, SZE-ÁJK
• Dr. habil. Péter Smuk PhD, SZE-ÁJK
• Dr. Klára Gellén Dr. Blazovich, associate professor, SZTE-ÁJK
• Dr. Péter Mezei, associate professor, SZTE-ÁJK
• Dr. Márton Sulyok, junior assistant professor, SZTE-ÁJK
• dr. Anett Pogácsás, assistant professor, PPKE-JÁK