News & Updates

At its board meeting on 19 May 2026, C. V. Åkerlund media foundation awarded a total of €240,805 in grants to 18 applicants in the March grant call. In addition, the foundation granted €212,716 to a project at University of Jyväskylä titled Journalists and Social Media Influencers as Gatekeepers in the Digital News Environment.

At the same meeting, the board also reviewed idea papers, of which a total of 46 were submitted. Four projects were invited to continue preparing full applications for the August grant call.

Altogether, 164 applications were received in the spring call, with the total amount applied for reaching €2,640,982. A significant share of the foundation’s funding is directed towards doctoral and postdoctoral research as well as book projects. The foundation also supports professional continuing education and university studies in the media field.

Until now, grants of €1,500 have been awarded for university studies, particularly for Master’s theses. In its spring meeting, the board decided to renew this practice by introducing a separate small grant call for Master’s thesis grants in the autumn. Going forward, Master’s thesis grants will no longer be awarded in the spring call.

The foundation will share more information about the upcoming project grant call and the new small grant call during June–August.

Warm congratulations to all grant recipients!

• Ahmed Ujuni — Training for journalists: power structures, hierarchies and source criticism in immigrant communities, €15,000
• Oula Airiola — Master’s thesis on the perceived significance of the University of Jyväskylä student newspaper among students at the University of Jyväskylä, €1,500
• Viivi Handolin — Portrait photography workshop, €700
• Ann-Mari Huhtanen — Narrative non-fiction book project, €24,000
• Petra Kiviniemi-Mäkinen — Student grant for Master’s thesis work, €1,500
• Laura Korkeamäki — Research on journalists’ information interaction with generative AI, €34,000
• Rinna Kullaa — The history of the war in Ukraine told through the lives and experiences of Ukrainians (2022–), €5,475
• Maria Lassila-Merisalo — The Matti Kuusela Case: academic research project, €13,500
• Ira Launiala — Participation in Visa pour l’Image 2026, €1,630
• Suvi Mononen — Finnish war journalism on Ukraine as a reproduction of cultural order: alliance, affect and necropolitics in Finnish war journalists’ interview speech, €30,000
• Arja Paananen — Preserving Mauri Ratilainen’s unique photographs of Russia for public access, €6,000
• Karoliina Paananen — Narrative non-fiction book on transformations in the fishing industry, €34,000
• Eino Rissanen — Events as a journalistic tool: Master’s thesis, €1,500
• Clarissa Rosi — Master’s thesis: forms of interaction and audience engagement in journalists’ comments at Uusi Juttu, €1,500
• Alva Sarkola — Master’s thesis: citizen journalism on Instagram, a case study on Gaza, €1,500
• Ingrid Svanfeldt — Fängslad av Belarus book project, €5,000
• Saara Särmä — Entertainment media and everyday militarisation in Finland in the 2020s, €34,000
• Yang Xu — Doctoral thesis: Governance Under Scrutiny: TikTok’s Platform Accountability in a Contested Regulatory Landscape, €30,000