Salzburg Academy on Media & Global Change

Part of Salzburg Global's Education Pillar

Our Purpose

The Salzburg Academy on Media & Global Change, also known as the Media Academy, convenes emerging leaders across media industries to build networks of innovation and leadership in media.

Participants collaborate to address social problems and design media-based solutions. The faculty provides mentorship to emerging media leaders, working to design media literacy practices and processes that support the next generation of civic-minded media leaders.

Why It Matters

Founded in 2007, the Media Academy is a network of emerging media leaders and practitioners who work collaboratively to support innovative media responses to pressing social challenges.

Every summer, the Media Academy convenes at Salzburg Global to design media innovations supported by peers and mentors worldwide. It is focused on cultivating this network through dynamic media literacy training and partnerships with external organizations.

For over 18 years, the Media Academy has been gathering aspiring media leaders, innovators, and storytellers for an immersive experience designed to build supportive networks for media innovation.

Learn More

Download Our 2025 Impact Report

Featured Work

Education Update

Building Community Through Stories

Oct 20, 2025

Education Update

Salzburg Academy on Media and Global Change Examines Local Media and Democratic Health

Aug 21, 2025

Our History The Salzburg Method The Fellowship Our Partners Support Us

Our Approach

The program's success is built on the premise that bringing together groups of committed and driven people to learn, collaborate, and engage in dynamic media-creation projects can cultivate and sustain committed leaders in media fields.

The faculty and practitioners from diverse media and tech fields provide media and digital literacy training, support, and capacity, and offer pipelines for participants to grow in their field.

Our Format

The Salzburg Academy on Media & Global Change usually hosts an annual 16-day session at Schloss Leopoldskron in Salzburg, Austria.

This in-residence session brings together 60-70 emerging leaders across media fields to connect with faculty, industry leaders, and media makers to explore how media could support more equitable and just global futures.

The program offers innovative and dynamic seminars, workshops, and culture-building opportunities each day, along with a program focused on cultural and personal enrichment. Weekends are also open for participants to explore Salzburg and the surrounding areas.

What We Offer

Program participants experience the following experiential outputs:

Connection to an active international community of outstanding leaders working at the intersection of media, innovation, and social change.
Inspiration and learning from across the world, and foresight into directions for future media environments and innovations.
Relationships for networking in media fields across organizational, professional, and national boundaries.
Access to a vast network of Salzburg Global Fellows working on similar pursuits.

Participants also have the opportunity to:

Harness the collective intelligence and experience of over 85 other emerging and established leaders in the media and media education fields.
Opportunities for mentoring, peer network building, and collaboration.
A candid, safe, and open exchange with peers under the Chatham House Rule.

Our Outcomes

Since our founding, we have hosted over 1,000 Fellows and created a strong ecosystem of young media innovators.

Fellows have moved into senior leadership positions in journalism, media, NGOs, public relations, policy, governmental positions, and related industries. Others have become leading researchers, artists, and practitioners.

Faculty have collaborated on numerous book projects, creative film and media projects, global research initiatives, and institutional partnerships and exchanges.

Outcomes from the Media Academy — reports, field guides, playbooks, and learning content — have been implemented in schools, governments, news organizations, and other sectors across over 60 countries.

Each year, as part of the Salzburg Academy on Media & Global Change, Fellows work in groups to produce their own media outputs centered on that year's key theme.

These digital publications feature stories, reflections, and ideas inspired by the session they've attended. Read more below about the publications created by Fellows in recent years.

Love Against the Machine (2024)

The final publication, "Love Against the Machine", of the 2024 Salzburg Academy on Media & Global Change centered around the theme "Belonging in the Age of Machines: Reimagining the Soul of Media".

This program asked how we could support and prioritize human belonging, compassion, attentiveness, and solidarity in a time of increasingly invasive technologies.

We explored what practices and pedagogies could advance relations and radical co-existence. Alternative truths and existing inequities threatened the best of intentions for machine learning and artificial intelligence.

At a time of global conflict and strife, we looked for pedagogies that centered care and the humanities as a way to develop with technology and communities that were both positive and productive. As we looked around the world, the need to fight for more inclusive and connected futures was of great urgency.

Lovers, Lunatics, and Poets (2023)

The final publication, "Lovers, Lunatics, and Poets," of the 2023 Salzburg Academy on Media & Global Change centered around the theme "Imagining Inclusive and Equitable Futures."

This program asked how we can imagine more inclusive futures through visioning media practices and pedagogies that work to advance meaningful and robust human connections and interdependency in digital culture.

The 2023 Media Academy focused specifically on how we can use immersive pedagogies to nurture transformational futures, in which media practitioners and educators can help communities imagine more robust, care-driven realities.

ReConnect (2022)

The final publication, "ReConnect," of the 2022 Salzburg Academy on Media & Global Change centered around the theme "After the Pandemic: How Can Media Advance Equitable and Just Civic Futures?"

During this program, discussions focused on how media organizations can aspire to a transformational future in which they can care for their communities, help them imagine alternative futures, and cultivate greater capacity for communities to participate meaningfully in media and daily life.

ReBuild (2019)

The final publication, "ReBuild," of the 2019 Salzburg Academy on Media & Global Change centered around the theme "The Cost of Disbelief: Fracturing Societies and the Erosion of Trust."

Participants of this program responded to the challenge of digital media environments becoming more divisive by bringing together emerging media makers and storytellers to create speculative futures focused on media infrastructures that can renew trust, re-imagine community engagement, and inspire new norms for participation in daily life.

Persist (2018)

The final publication, "Persist," of the 2018 Salzburg Academy on Media & Global Change, centered around the theme "Re-Imagining Journalism: News and Storytelling in an Age of Distrust."

As trust in media organizations continues to decline amidst cries of fake news, this program analyzed the fast-moving media landscape and experimented with new approaches to reporting and storytelling that combine rigor and engagement to combat the age of distrust.

Reaction (2017)

The final publication, "Reaction," of the 2017 Salzburg Academy on Media & Global Change centered around the theme "Voices Against Extremism: Media Responses to Global Populism."

This program focused on global populism and explored the construction, production, and dissemination of populist narratives; how such narratives emerge and are perpetuated in digital and mainstream media spaces; and how civic media, including journalism, advocacy, and civic voice, can respond in dynamic ways.

Move (2016)

The final publication, "Move," of the 2016 Salzburg Academy on Media & Global Change centered around the theme "Migration, Media & Global Uncertainty."

Participants of this program explored the role of media literacy in engaging citizens, journalists, governmental bodies, and capacity organizations in cross-cultural dialogue about migration and its portrayal in contemporary digital culture.