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.