Media Monitoring

Media monitoring is, in a sense, the precondition for much else that has been discussed regarding media regulation during elections and the development of best practices. Without a serious and systematic picture of what the media are actually producing, any discussion about standards or policies can be little more than anecdotal.

Yet, despite the obvious importance of media monitoring, it is only fairly recently that it has become a standard practice in the management of elections.

Who monitors the media?

Three main groups undertake monitoring of the media during elections:

• Electoral management bodies;
• International electoral observation missions;
• Non-governmental organisations and other civic bodies.

The purpose in each instance is rather different. Electoral administrators will normally monitor the media in order to determine whether they have adhered to the regulations or laws governing media behaviour during elections. If EMBs have a direct regulatory function, they will use their monitoring findings to make sure that media comply with the required standards.

International observers are also concerned with media compliance with local rules and laws. However, they are also more broadly concerned with monitoring the contribution that the media make to a free and fair election. They also, of course, have no powers of enforcement and will usually withhold their monitoring findings until after the election has taken place. The value of media monitoring by international electoral observation missions is that it integrates the question of fair media coverage into an overall assessment of whether the election was fairly conducted.

Non–governmental organisations and other civil society groups will have more freedom in the way that they can monitor election coverage. They can devise more varied methodologies to determine different types of media bias. (EMBs and international observers, by contrast, are likely to be restricted to a simple analysis of the allocation of time to parties and candidates.) Civil society monitors, unlike international observers, can also make their findings public whenever they choose, not being restricted until after the election has been held. They can communicate their findings directly to the media. This means that civil society monitoring can often be used as part of an effort to raise journalistic standards while the election campaign is still going on.

The efforts of these different monitoring groups can be complementary and even co-ordinated. In some cases, as in Malawi’s first multi-party election in 1994, an electoral management body may take notice of civil society media monitoring and use its powers to try to make media coverage fairer. In other instances, as in South Africa in 1999, the EMB may hire a non-governmental monitoring group to be its eyes and ears.

Likewise, in the Ukrainian presidential elections of 2004 there was media monitoring from both intergovernmental groups and local human rights and media freedom organisations. The local groups were able to publish their findings regularly (and on a broader set of issues), with their conclusions bolstered by those of the international monitors.

What do media monitors do?

The intellectual origins of media monitoring are to be found in the development of academic media studies, such as the work of the Glasgow Media Group. Academic media analysis, which is primarily geared to the sophisticated media of developed industrial societies, tends to focus in large measure on what it calls "discourse analysis". This is primarily concerned with the hidden messages conveyed by the language selected - or the visual language of television and the subtle or subliminal impact that these can have on the viewer's understanding or interpretation of a subject. Discourse analysis is certainly an element of media monitoring in elections. But usually the emphasis will be on two other standards that are easier to apprehend and then to measure. These are usually described as "quantitative analysis" and "qualitative analysis". The first is the simplest, the least controversial and often has the greatest impact. It simply entails counting and measuring election coverage in the media - number and length of items devoted to different parties, length in column inches, timing and number of direct access programmes and so on. The amount of coverage each party or candidate receives is usually the first criterion that will be looked at in order to evaluate allegations of bias.

"Qualitative analysis" is, as the name suggests, an approach that measures the quality of the coverage that parties and candidates receive. This applies primarily to news coverage, although it should also be applied to voter education. A qualitative evaluation will look at the language used and the message conveyed - not the hidden messages of discourse analysis - and use this to "qualify" the quantitative measure. It may not be very useful to say that Party X has received a certain percentage of news coverage, if a large part of that coverage is biased in its content. Inevitably the measurement of bias is more subjective than simply counting the minutes, seconds or column inches accorded to each candidate. But there are ways of minimizing potential bias on the part of the monitor. One is to count and attribute the sources of a story.

Media monitoring has become a common feature of elections since the mid-1990s. There has been a convergence of methodology among those groups carrying out media monitoring regularly, whether in partnership with national NGOs, with intergovernmental observer teams or on behalf of EMBs. International NGOs such as the European Institute for the Media, along with national organizations such as the Osservatorio di Pavia (Italy), MEMO98 (Slovakia), the Media Monitoring Project (South Africa) and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (United States) have popularized easy, effective and surprisingly subtle monitoring methodologies and created a large pool of people familiar with their use.

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Media Monitoring by Electoral Management Bodies

Electoral management bodies may monitor media coverage for a number of reasons:

• To determine whether the law or regulations on access to the media are being respected – for example, in the allocation and timing of free direct access or advertising slots, the observance of “reflection periods”, respect for regulations on content of advertising and direct access and so on.
• To review more broadly whether political parties and candidates are receiving fair access and coverage, for example in news coverage.
• To identify any emerging issues relating to electoral management or the conduct of the campaign that the EMB itself may have to address.
• To see how the activities of the EMB itself are being reported.

The first two of these aims will entail gathering extensive quantitative data - in effect, a full-scale media monitoring project. The other two could be achieved by a more casual and non-systematic review of media coverage, of a type that the EMB may anyway conduct as a matter of routine.

As experience of media monitoring grows and methodologies are more widely disseminated, it has become more common for EMBs (or other regulatory bodies) to contract outside experts to monitor the media. These may be university media studies or other social science departments or non-governmental organisations. The shift can be observed, for example, In South Africa. In 1994, media monitoring was the responsibility of a specialised regulatory body, the Independent Media Commission, established specifically for the duration of the election campaign. By the next elections, in 1999, the broadcasting regulator contracted the non-governmental Media Monitoring Project to monitor on its behalf.

The advantage of contracting outside expertise is clearly that it reduces the administrative burden on the EMB (at a time when other pressures are going to be at their maximum). There are, however, two potential disadvantages, which will be of varying significance depending on other circumstances.

The first potential disadvantage of contracting out is that the media and political parties may not perceive the monitoring findings as being authentically those of the EMB. If the EMB needs to act upon them, the findings may be regarded as a basis for negotiation rather than authoritative. Some EMBs have concluded that setting up their own media monitoring unit for the duration of the election period is a preferable option.

The second potential disadvantage is that the EMB will not develop its own expertise on media issues. Given that many EMBs tend to be inward looking and rather conservative in their dealings with the media, encouraging media literacy among the institution’s staff may have broader benefits. In the long term – given that elections are recurrent events – developing in-house expertise may also be more cost-effective.

Media Monitoring by International Election Observation Missions

Since the late 1990s media monitoring has become a common component of international election observations missions (EOMs). This is an acknowledgment of the importance of fair access to the media as a criterion in assessing the overall acceptability of an election process.

Some organisations, such as the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the European Union, invariably include a media team in their EOMs. Other intergovernmental EOMs, such as those from the Commonwealth, may not include their own media monitoring component but will increasingly draw on the media monitoring findings of others. Commonwealth bodies such as the Commonwealth Press Union have themselves undertaken media monitoring, quite separately from the EOMs organised by the Commonwealth Secretariat.

The work on the media undertaken by international EOMs should properly be described as media analysis rather than media monitoring. Organisations such as the OSCE have refined their methodology to the point where a member of the core observation team is responsible for developing an overall analysis of the media scene and its potential impact on the election. This general understanding of the media environment – ownership, laws, past history of restrictions on media activity – will be vital in interpreting the quantitative data gathered in the course of monitoring.

The media analyst in the core team is responsible for training a team of monitors. These will necessarily be nationals of the country concerned, because of the requirement that they have the necessary language skills, as well as an understanding of the local political scene. Monitoring will always have a strong emphasis on quantitative data, primarily the question of the allocation of time and space to different parties and candidates.

Monitoring by international EOMs differs from monitoring by local organisations in two important respects.

• Local monitoring, whether by NGOs or by the electoral management body itself, is intended as a constructive intervention in the election process. If media coverage is unfair, the aim of monitoring is to point this out before the election and attempt to prompt corrective action. International observers cannot intervene in an election process and, for the most part, will not present detailed monitoring findings until after the election is over. The OSCE publishes summary data from its media monitoring in an interim report, but does not release its full conclusions until later.
• International monitoring confines itself to a fairly narrow reading of international or regional standards on access to the media by political parties and candidates. Local monitoring, especially by NGOs, can choose to focus both on a wider range of qualitative indicators and on quantitative measures addressing questions such as gender and ethnic imbalances, or the extent to which the media reflect the campaigning agendas of the different candidates.

The value of incorporating media analysis into international EOMs is that this makes for a more complete and rounded evaluation of the validity of an election. For both media and election managers within the country, international media monitoring findings can be used as a comparison with the conclusions from domestic media monitoring, as well as providing benchmarks for media coverage of future elections.

Domestic media monitors can also learn from the methodologies used by media monitors in international EOMs. The OSCE has developed a manual for its media analysts, describing the international and regional standards underpinning its work, techniques of media analysis and the basics of its media monitoring methodology.

Media Monitoring by Non-Governmental Organisations

Non-governmental organizations have a broad range of reasons for monitoring media coverage of an election. Their primary aim is likely to be the same as that of an electoral management body or international observation mission: to ensure that news coverage is fair and professional and that different parties and candidates have access to the media.

Beyond this primary aim, the aims of NGOs (or of other non-governmental monitors) may be more complex. They may be concerned, for example, with the content of electoral coverage. What topics do media reports cover? How far do these reflect the particular agendas of parties or candidates? Is electoral debate portrayed in a professional and dispassionate manner or do the media inflame partisan sentiments by their language or the style of their coverage?

Do the media actually meet the information needs of voters (an obvious question, but one that is perhaps asked too infrequently)? Are the positions of parties and candidates evaluated from viewpoint of the voter – see Voter’s Voice Reporting – or are the media complicit with the candidates in the uncritical presentation of their policies? Are the media playing an effective educative role? Do they tell voters what they need to know about where, how and why to vote?

How far are the interests and voices of minority or marginalized groups reflected in the media? Are women’s voices being adequately heard in the election campaign through the media? If not, why not? Are the media reflecting social gender bias uncritically, or are they making an effort to challenge it?

The range of issues that non-governmental media monitors have tackled is broad. Seldom is a media monitoring operation going to be able to address all these issues. What they can do, however, is to being their particular expertise to bear upon particular aspects of media coverage.

Most often this area of expertise will be in the area of the media itself. NGOs concerned with media freedom and with professional standards are most often engaged in monitoring. The purpose may be both to defend the media against political interference, whether from governments or private proprietors. Or it may be to promote professionalism in coverage.

At the minimum the published findings of media monitors may influence the quality of media coverage. Sometimes, as in Mozambique in 1994, the dialogue between monitors and journalists may go a step further. The news room of Radio Mozambique used to hold a weekly meeting to discuss the monitors' observations, decide whether they agreed with them or not and make plans for improvements. The improvement in the balance of radio coverage - away from heavy bias to the ruling party - was measurable over the campaign period.

In Tanzania’s 2000 elections, the media monitoring project was initiated by the Media Council, a voluntary professional body, in conjunction with other NGOs concerned with media freedom and professionalism. The project began with a conference, attended by representatives of the main media, which drew up a code of conduct for election coverage. The purpose of monitoring was explicitly to examine whether coverage complied with the standards that the media themselves had agreed upon. Inevitably, media houses often disputed the findings of the monitors. But they proved ready to engage in dialogue, which can only have benefited the quality of coverage.

On other occasions, the relationship between non-governmental monitors and media has been more difficult. Hostility between government media and non-governmental monitors is common. The latter are accused of promoting their own quasi-political agenda. Sometimes private media houses exhibit a similar reaction – for example in Moldova in 2005 – questioning the qualifications and bona fides of a monitoring group that produced critical findings.

On occasions, monitoring groups will address other issues too.

A good example of this broader focus came in media monitoring of the Ukrainian presidential election in 2004. One non-governmental group, Equal Access, carried out a lengthy and comprehensive monitoring that addressed the sole issue of the media access allocated to the different candidates. In parallel, two other organisations, the Institute of Mass Communication and the Kharkiv Human Rights Group, ran a monitoring project that addressed other issues in addition to the allocation of time and space to candidates. They looked at coverage of issues of particular concern to minority ethnic groups – including Crimean Tatars – and at the representation of women in election coverage. Their findings were scarcely surprising – under-reporting of minority concerns and a low frequency of women’s voices as news sources – but they provide important baseline information if these issues are to be tackled in future.

Media Monitoring Methodology

Media monitors – whether they be electoral administrators, international observers, civic activists or academics – will need to settle a number of methodological questions before embarking on their project:

• What media are to be monitored? Will it be just public media, or all media? Will it be just broadcasting outlets or print media too? Will it be a selection of media or all major national outlets?
• Which parts of the media output are to be monitored? Will it be specified news bulletins, all output during particular times of the day, or all output?
• What content will be monitored (and with what purpose): news, advertising, free direct access slots, special programming, voter education, or all of these?
• Will the monitoring seek to gather only data about how much time was allocated to the different parties or candidates or will it also look at other aspects of coverage, such as the use of language, the selection of news stories etc?
• Is the monitoring intended as part of an intervention into the election campaign – for example, to require the media to adhere to professional standards – or is it primarily aimed at documenting whether media coverage was fair and balanced?

The answers to each of these questions have an important impact on the monitoring methodology that is adopted.

Most methodologies used to monitor media coverage of elections draw on a technique known as content analysis. This is an essentially quantitative methodology. That is, it is concerned with elements of media output that can be measured and counted. Content analysis has been criticized for reducing media coverage to what is measurable, leaving out important aspects such as tone and language, whether spoken or visual. The criticism may be valid. There are many things that content analysis cannot do – most simply and obviously it cannot reveal whether news coverage was accurate or inaccurate. However, most organisations that have undertaken media monitoring of elections do use the content analysis, quantitative approach, at least as part of their work.

Typically quantitative monitoring of media election coverage will focus on the amount of time allocated to parties and candidates. This may then be qualified by an assessment of whether the coverage is favourable or unfavourable. Although these measures may also be quantified, they are essentially qualitative judgments.

Some monitoring methodologies introduce other types of quantitative measure in an attempt to avoid relying on monitors’ assessment of whether coverage is positive or negative. They may, for example, count the sources that journalists use, assigning them to different political or social categories. This may be a more objective measure of balance. They may classify media items by topic. This can be useful since, in an election campaign, political parties often campaign not only with different positions but also on different issues. The media’s selection of topics may therefore be a sensitive indicator of their political sympathies.

Another aim of quantitative monitoring may simply be to measure the amount, and perhaps timing, of political advertising or free direct access programming. This may be to ensure that what is actually published or broadcast conforms to the laws or regulations governing direct access.

When media monitoring findings are reported, the greatest attention is usually paid to the allocation of coverage by parties and candidates (along with an evaluation of who is favoured or disfavoured by that coverage). It will be essential in reporting these findings to distinguish clearly between allocation of time in news coverage and in the various other types of coverage – paid advertising, free direct access, opinion pieces and so on.

Media Monitoring and Media Analysis

Monitoring the output of the media will never tell the whole story about how far they are doing a professional job of keeping the electorate informed. Monitoring focuses on what the media produce. Looking at the content of media coverage cannot answer important questions about the legal and political environment in which the media operate.

Media monitoring – whether by electoral managers, observer missions or non-governmental groups – should always be part of a broader process of media analysis. Indeed, many monitoring findings will be inexplicable without placing them in context. Who owns the different media houses? What laws restrict the operations of journalists? Have there been physical attacks on the media? Without answers to these and other questions the quantitative and qualitative findings of media monitoring will be meaningless.

Analysis of the media role in elections will take account of a number of factors, which can be grouped under the following broad headings:

• Media environment: Who owns the media? What are their political leanings? What is the structure of any publicly funded media? How do the media make their money? What is the audience for different media outlets?
• Media law: What is the legal environment in which the media operate? Are there generalised restrictions on media freedom? Does the law relating to media and elections enable the media to report freely or does it restrict them? Are any restrictive laws in regular use?
• Professional standards and traditions: Does the country have a tradition of media freedom? Is there a long history of independent professional journalism? Is there professional regulation of the media (for example through a code of conduct and a self-regulatory complaints procedure)? Have most journalists received professional training?
• Attacks on the media: Have journalists been allowed to go about their work unhampered? Have there been attacks on journalists by government agents? By supporters of different political parties? Have journalists been arrested and imprisoned?
• Informal controls over the media: Do the government or important political figures exercise informal political control over what appears in some media outlets? Does this happen through bribes and inducements? Threats and penalties? Self-censorship? Or a combination of all of these?

Quantitative Media Monitoring Methods

Quantitative media monitoring methodology is often described as content analysis. This has been an influential, but not universally accepted, approach to media studies for more than half a century.

The various criticisms of content analysis boil down to the common charge that it entails imposing arbitrary and inflexible categories upon texts that may in reality be open to much subtler interpretations. Hence, for example, content analysis takes no account of how an audience will understand a message conveyed through the news media. It simply undertakes a quantitative analysis of that message. Quantitative analysis implies the selection of elements of the content of media output that can be counted. In many examples of academic content analysis, the indicators selected may be words. Researchers will measure the frequency with which certain words, or combinations of words, appear.

Whatever the validity of the criticisms of content analysis, the fact is that it is often used in media monitoring in the context of elections. The analysis very seldom focuses on selection of words. Rather, monitors will identify and count one or more of the following variables:

• Frequency with which parties or candidates are mentioned.
• Length of time allocated to parties or candidates.
• Frequency with which various other political or social actors are mentioned.
• Frequency or time allocated to different topics.

There are a number of other variables that monitors might wish to identify. These might include: gender of cited sources, geographical origin of the story, the time that an item is broadcast, the position of an item in a news bulletin and so on.

Different methodologies will incorporate different indicators. The common characteristics of any well-chosen indicators, however, will be that they are reliable and valid.

Reliability means that there will be the same results, whoever the monitor is. In other words, there will be a scientific classification system that can be replicated in most instances. For example, measuring the amount of time directly spoken by a particular candidate is reliable. Classifying topics according to a predetermined set of codes is also reliable, provided that monitors are trained in how to apply that classification system and will usually – say 95 times out of 100 – yield the same result.

Validity means that the data gathered actually show what they are supposed to show. For example, a mere counting of the sex of the voices cited by the media is unlikely to be a valid measure of gender bias. Too many other factors would have to be taken into account: general social attitudes towards women, the gender distribution of candidacies in the different political parties, and so on. Likewise, the amount of time allocated to a particular candidate would not be a valid indicator of bias on behalf on the part of a media outlet. (Other considerations would need to be taken into account, such as the content of the coverage.)

Quantitative monitoring – some possible approaches

All quantitative media monitoring of election coverage is likely to focus on the time allocated to different parties or candidates. Exactly how this will be computed is a matter of choice, with various advantages or disadvantages to the differing approaches.

Many European media monitoring organisations – including the European Institute of the Media, the Osservatorio di Pavia and MEMO98 – use an approach that is predicated upon the frequency of mention of a number of predetermined “political subjects”. Each mention of these subjects within the monitoring period will be logged separately and the amount of direct speech times allocated will be recorded. Each mention will also usually be classified as positive, negative or neutral towards the “subject”.

A slightly different approach is not to count frequency, but to break broadcasting bulletins and publications into “items”. An item will normally correspond to a story within a news bulletin or a newspaper, or a political advertisement. All overtly identified sources for the item will be recorded, both by name and by category (such as political party). Direct speech times will also be counted. The entire item will be assessed to determine whether it favours and/or opposes any candidates or parties. The advantage of this method is that counting the number of sources for each item and evaluating their diversity gives an objective measure of the professionalism of media coverage. The disadvantage is that it does not strictly count the frequency of mentions of a party or candidate. Methodologies of this type are used by organisations such as the Media Monitoring Projects in South Africa and Zimbabwe and ARTICLE 19, which does media monitoring in Africa and Eastern Europe.

Each of these methodologies has to address the common problem of how to assess whether a mention of a political subject or an entire news item (depending on the exact methodology) favours or opposes a candidate or party. Some methodologies use a scale of assessment, in which the monitor places the item somewhere on a measure between +2 (very positive) and -2 ((very negative), passing through positive, neutral and negative.

There is clearly always going to be an issue of reliability. How will it be possible to ensure that monitors apply the same evaluation? This can only be achieved thorough training and practice. This will determine the margin of error in evaluating items on the scale.

Determining positive and negative coverage

The more fundamental problem, however, is how to apply objective criteria. It is important, first, to understand that evaluating whether an item or speech is positive or negative about a particular party or candidate is not the same as determining if it is biased. The measurement of bias comes only when it is possible to assess the aggregated measures of positive or negative coverage.

One effective approach is to use two sets of criteria in determining whether an item is positive or negative: context and content.

The first of these, content, refers to the way in which the story is framed. For example, if a story is about a politician appearing in court on charges of fraud, the frame is clearly negative. (Note that this has nothing to do with whether the story is accurate or fair.) If the politician is rather receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, the frame is positive. If the politician is addressing a political rally, the frame is most likely to be neutral.

The second criterion, content, refers to the overt facts and tone of the story. If the politician charged with fraud makes a particularly effective speech from the dock, this may be positive (despite the negative framing of the story). If the journalist says that the politician did not deserve to receive the Nobel Prize, this is negative, despite the positive framing. More commonly, of course, the framing and content coincide.

If context and content do coincide, then it is clear how the item will be classified. If the context and content lead to opposite conclusions (one positive, one negative), then they will cancel each other out and the item will be classified as neutral. If either content or context is neutral, while the other is positive or negative, then the latter will determine how the item is classified.

Other quantitative methods for evaluating coverage

In the second family of methodologies already described, there are a number of other quantitative indicators that can be used:

• Number of sources is an indicator of journalistic professionalism. Distribution and balance of sources may indicate political bias.
• Gender of sources may be a useful indicator if carefully interpreted.
• Geographical distribution of stories may be significant in some instances.
• Selection of topics is likely to be important.

The final point – selection of topics – may often be a sensitive quantitative indicator of the political inclinations of the media. Political parties usually campaign on somewhat different issues from their opponents. The selection of stories covered by the media will often suggest how far they subscribe to the political agenda of one party or another.

Statistics on sources say something about balance, but not automatically about bias. A one-source story is unbalanced, but it need not be biased. If the governor of the central bank announces a rise in interest rates, no other voice is required because it is a straight news item. (Good journalistic practice might suggest that a comment from the political parties and independent experts would be helpful.) On other hand, coverage of political violence that only quoted from one party would probably be biased.

Qualitative Media Monitoring Methods

Quantitative analysis alone will not adequately explain the strengths and weaknesses of media coverage. It is not enough to complain that the ruling party is receiving more media coverage than the opposition - there may be good reasons for this, for example in terms of their public support. But equally, simply counting the number of items may conceal the fact that some parties' "quota" of coverage may include items that show them in a bad light. For example, in South Africa before the 1994 elections the state broadcaster kept its own statistical record of party coverage, which showed that the African National Congress, then in opposition, was receiving extensive coverage. Yet this proportion included much negative coverage, such as the reporting of Winnie Mandela's trial for kidnapping. Hence the bare statistics do not tell all.

Extremely important aspects of election coverage are not readily susceptible to quantitative monitoring. Reporting of inflammatory speech, for example, will require close textual analysis of the approach that the media uses.

Monitors will also analyse the content of voter education material to ensure that no party political message is being conveyed. Often they will wish to compare the treatment of the same stories in different language services. There is often a quite different content to broadcasts in the colonial language - English, French, Spanish or Portuguese - and indigenous languages. The former will, to some extent, be for external consumption. Broadcasters and politicians often assume that no independent monitor is paying attention to what they say in their own languages.

One very important consideration is how far media reporting is accurate. Media monitors will measure bias by comparing media reporting to their own understanding of events derived from a variety of sources. One way of doing this is "source monitoring": the media monitors themselves attend an important newsworthy event such as a political rally or a press conference, in order to see how media coverage compares with their own perceptions. The Internet has made it easier for monitors to compare domestic coverage with international reporting on their country. The two sometimes bear little relation to each other.

Evaluating the implicit messages contained within media coverage is at the same time important, difficult and highly contentious. Under this heading come all the subtleties of language and visuals that convey a message that is understood by the audience, but sometimes not in a conscious manner. This can be most clearly shown in the use of words, whether in print or broadcast. For example, pro-government media may have the President "stating" something, while his opponent only "alleges". Reporting does not have to be inaccurate to be an improper influence on the audience's perceptions. In South Africa before the 1994 election, for example, monitors noticed that reports of ANC demonstrations always mentioned the amount of litter left behind by the participants. The message was that the ANC was disruptive and irresponsible. Foreign news items can be used to encourage a particular interpretation of domestic news. In Malawi in 1994, coverage of opposition parties on the state broadcaster was placed alongside news of the Rwandan genocide. The subliminal message was that an end to one-party "stability" would lead to bloodshed.

Television has a whole complex visual vocabulary. Figures who are regarded as authoritative - such as incumbent politicians - may be portrayed at an upward angle, while others are filmed at a level angle or from above. Figures in authority will more often address the camera directly, while others will address an unseen interviewer to one side of the camera and thus will not address the viewer directly. Ordinary interviewees - opposition members, trade unionists, the public - will usually be interviewed in the open air. Government members will be seen in their office, often shuffling papers and apparently engaged in some urgent and important activity. An office background tends to emphasise the authority and expertise of the interviewee. And so on.

Even the graphics and logos that accompany a news broadcast may convey a message. The graphic on South African television for the running story of political negotiations in 1993 showed two white men and one black man. This was later changed to one white man, one off-white woman and one black man. Neither of these reflected the actual composition of the negotiations. More blatantly, in the Zimbabwean 2000 elections, a special current affairs programme that run through the campaign period had as its logo the tower at the Great Zimbabwe ruins - exactly the same as the symbol of the ruling party.

Reporting Media Monitoring Findings

The way in which media monitoring findings are reported is a crucial aspect of media monitoring methodology. Exactly how this is approached will vary depending on the type of monitoring exercise and who is conducting it.

For example, international election observation missions usually do not report their findings until the election is over (or at least the campaign is complete) except perhaps for a single interim report. An electoral management body or a national non-governmental organisation is more likely to want to report their findings on a regular basis – as often as once a week, or even daily in the later stages of an election campaign. The reason is that their purpose in reporting is to have an impact on media coverage, either as a regulatory authority or as a pressure group.

All reports – even short weekly reports – will need to contain certain standard elements, even if they may be very brief in a shorter report:

• A summary of findings.
• A description of the project and methodology.
• A presentation of data and findings.
• Conclusions and recommendations.

Longer reports will all also include information about the overall media landscape (including such elements as any violations of media freedom).

All serious media monitoring reports will have certain common elements in their style and presentation. The language used should always be neutral and politically non-partisan. Conclusions and observations will be presented clearly and substantiated by the statistical data and other evidence presented. The limitations and possible weaknesses of the data should also be explained.

Data will be more clearly comprehensible if it is presented graphically – for example as bar or pie charts. However, care should be taken with this. Absolute data should also be shown as percentages to help readers understand their significance. But percentages should also be qualified by showing the absolute data on which they are based. It is all to easy to write something like: “There was 100 per cent more coverage of Party A than of Party B.” But perhaps there were just two stories about one party and one about the other.

Recommendations are also important. If the report is a reflective one covering the whole election period, these will be aimed at future changes in media practice and perhaps also the law and regulations governing the media in election periods. For interim reports, recommendations are likely to be more specifically focused in order to encourage the media to report more fairly.

Distributing reports

In most cases it is now easiest to distribute regular media monitoring reports by email. But in doing so, do not ignore the important audiences that may not be readily accessible by this medium. Here is a quick check-list of the possible audiences for media monitoring reports. They will vary, of course, depending on local circumstances as well as the nature of the monitoring exercise.

• Media houses.
• The electoral management body.
• Political parties.
• Media regulatory bodies.
• Relevant non-governmental organisations.
• Professional media bodies (such as journalists’ unions, voluntary media council etc).
• Civic and community organisations.
• Observer and monitoring groups and missions.
• Diplomatic and donor bodies.