College of Arts and Sciences

Education:

• PhD in Social Sciences from KU Leuven (B) (2000)
• MA in Mass Communication from the University of Leicester (UK) (1991)
• MA in Communication Studies from KU Leuven (B) (1989)

Curriculum Vitae:

Research Interests:

• Political economy of media structures
• Algorithmization, datafication and platformization
• Trust and digital media
• Media policies for digitized media ecologies
• Public (service) media
• Digital media and popular culture
• Digital media, popular culture and populism
• Media and (collective) identities
• Celebrity culture and industry
• Celebrity philanthropy and activism
• Fandom and anti-fandom

Bio:

Hilde Van den Bulck combines expertise in media structure and policies with expertise in media culture. Her work on media structures and policies focuses on the impact of technological, political, economic and cultural processes on legacy media, most recently focusing on the impact of algorithmization, datafication and platformization. She specializes in public (service) media, recently analyzing how personalization strategies based on algorithms affect the core public media value of universality and how trust in public service media in Europe and the US is affected by these developments.

With regards to media culture, next to analyzing the relationships between media culture(s) and collective (national, ethnic, gender and age-related) identities, she focuses on the role of mediated communication in celebrity culture and the celebrity apparatus. Always linking media culture to media industry, she analyzes how celebrities’ ideas, words, and actions provoke mediated debates amongst fans, wider audiences and, in the case of celebrity activism, politicians and policy makers. Topics range from celebrity and health, over celebrity and BLM to celebrity and populism. As a corollary, she analyzes celebrity fandom and anti-fandom.

Beyond that, for many years she had a monthly column in Belgian newspaper De Standaard and, later, on the news site of main Flemish public media institution VRT. For 12 years, she was vice chair of the Sectorial Media Council that provides policy advice to the Flemish Media Minister. Before coming to Drexel, Hilde was a Professor of Communication Studies, Head of Department of Communication, then Associate Dean of Research and later Dean of the Social Sciences at the University of Antwerp in Belgium.

Selected Publications:

Books

• Puppis, M.; Mansell, R., & Van den Bulck, H. (Eds.) (2024). Handbook of media and communication governance. Elgar.
• Ouvrien, G., Jorge, A., & Van den Bulck, H. (Eds.) (2024). Audience interactions in contemporary celebrity culture. Lexington books.
• Van den Bulck, H., Puppis, M., Donders, K. & Van Audenhove, L (Eds.) (2019). Palgrave handbook of methods for media policy analysis. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave.
• Van den Bulck, H. (2018). Celebrity philanthropy and activism: Mediated interventions in the global public sphere. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.

Articles

• Hyzen, A., Van den Bulck, H., Puppis, M., Kulig, M., and Paulussen, S. (2026). Epistemic Welfare and Algorithmic Recommender Systems: Overcoming the Epistemic Crisis in the Digitalized Public Sphere. Communication Theory, 36(1). doi: 10.1093/ct/qtaf018
• Ali, C., Van den Bulck, H., & Kropko, J. (2025). An island of trust: Public broadcasting in the United States. Journal of Communication, 75(5), 371-384. DOI: 10.1093/joc/jqaf009
• Hendrickx, J., & Van den Bulck, H. (2025). Rumor has it: Epistemology of celebrity journalism in the Flemish digital media ecology. Journalism, 26(7), 1391-1410. https://doi.org/10.1177/14648849241263328
• Van den Bulck, H., Horowitz, M., & Raats, T. (2025). Rethinking transparency in public service media: a multidimensional framework for better governance. Frontiers in Communication, 10:1569363. doi: 10.3389/fcomm.2025.1569363
• Van den Bulck, H., Kulig, M., Hyzen, A., Puppis, M., & Paulussen, S. (2025). Epistemic welfare and public service media’s algorithmic recommender systems: A theoretical framework, operationalization and relevance for governance. European Journal of Communication, 40(6) https://doi.org/10.1177/02673231251385761
• Hyzen, A., & Van den Bulck, H. (2021). Conspiracies, ideological entrepreneurs and digital popular culture. Media and Communication, 9(3), 179-188. DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i3.4092
• Van den Bulck, H. & Hyzen, A (2020). Of lizards and ideological entrepreneurs: Alex Jones and Infowars in the relationship between populist nationalism and the post-global media ecology. International Communication Gazette, 82(1), 42-59. https://doi.org/10.1177/1748048519880726
• Van den Bulck, H. & Moe, M. (2018) ‘Universality and Personalisation Through Algorithms: Mapping Strategies and Exploring Dilemmas’, Media Culture and Society, 40(6): 875-892 (open access: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0163443717734407).

Book Chapters

• Hyzen, A. & Van den Bulck, H. (2024). The role of digital media and popular culture in contemporary political campaigning. In D. Lilleker, D. Jackson, B. Kalsnes, C. Mellado, F. Trevisan, & A. Veneti (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Political Campaigning. Routledge.
• Jenkins, A., & Van den Bulck, H. (2024). Audience Relations to African American Athletes’ Activism from a Diachronic, Media Ecology and Celebrity Apparatus Perspective: Tommie Smith, John Carlos and Colin Kaepernick. In G. Ouvrien, A. Jorge & H. Van den Bulck (Eds.), Audience interactions in contemporary celebrity culture (pp. 107-126). Lexington books.
• Puppis, M. & Van den Bulck, H. (2024) Methods for Global Media and Communication Governance Research. In C. Padovani, V. Wavre, A. Hintz, G. Goggin, & P. Isofodis (Eds.) Global Communication Governance At the Crossroads (pp. 371-388). New York: Palgrave.