Electoral management bodies may choose to
monitor media coverage for a number of reasons:
- To
determine whether 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 reasons entail gathering extensive quantitative data -
in effect, a full-scale media monitoring project. The other two can 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
practice.
As official bodies, media regulatory
agencies tasked with media monitoring during elections tend to have similar
goals and mandates to EMB media monitoring. Sometimes media regulatory agencies
focus only the type of media in their remit, for example broadcast media.
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, or to collaborate
with them.
These may be university media studies or other social science departments or
civil society organisations.
