Partners Drexel
Hilde Van den Bulck
Hilde Van den Bulck is a Professor of Communication Studies and Head of the Department of Communication at Drexel University in Philadelphia (PA). She holds an MA in Communication Science from KULeuven (B), an MA in Mass Communication from Leicester University (UK) and a PhD in Social Sciences from KULeuven (B). She starting at Drexel in 2018, after 17 years at Antwerp University (B) where she was a Professor of Communication Studies, Head of Department of Communication, then Associate Dean of Research and later Dean of the Social Sciences.
Hilde Van den Bulck combines expertise in media structure and policies with expertise in media culture. With regards to media culture, she analyses the relationships between media culture(s) and collective (national, ethnic, gender and age-related) identities. In this context, she developed extensive expertise in the analysis of representation of various issues and groups in media content. In the past ten years, she has shifted focus to the role of mediated communication in celebrity culture and the celebrity apparatus, in particular, how celebrities’ ideas, words, and actions provoke mediated debates amongst fans, wider audiences and, in the case of celebrity activism, politicians and policy makers. She has studied these dynamics with regards to various topics, including health, nutrition, dieting, aging and wellbeing, amongst others. She analyzed the framing by media and audiences of heart-related celebrity health issues and of the role of food and dieting in images of aging celebrity bodies. In 2018, Routledge published her book Celebrity Philanthropy and Activism: Mediated Interventions in the Global Public Sphere. The core content of this book is presented in this animated video:
Her work on media structures and policies focuses on the impact of technological, political, economic and cultural processes, especially how digitization and convergence affect legacy media. She specializes in public (service) media in that regard, most recently analyzing how personalization strategies based on algorithms affect (audience attitudes towards) the core public media value of universality and trust. Recently, she was principle editor of the Palgrave Handbook of Methods for Media Policy Research. For 12 years, she was vice chair of the Sectorial Media Council that provides policy advice to the Flemish Media Minister.