The Media Monitoring Centre was already engaged in monitoring before the 1998 election period, at that time providing news summaries that gave an overview of the political situation and monitored for inflammatory language and/or hate speech. Leading up to the election period, in addition to this, they began to provide daily data of a quantitative nature: the amount of time dedicated to political parties or personalities and the number of mentions.
During the election period itself both qualitative and quantitative monitoring was extended to measure the Provisional Electoral Commission's requirements that the media give "fair coverage" and "equitable access" to all political units participating in the elections. All the monitoring was undertaken to a standard format directed at these requirements and extended to seven day coverage to ensure a comprehensive picture was obtained.
Seven radio and television stations were monitored from 5.00 pm until midnight seven days a week for the three weeks leading up to the election blackout period one day before voting began.
The monitoring covered the following:
- time share per political unit in news periods
- time share per political unit in non-news periods
- total number of political commercials in non-news periods
- total number of mentions of political personalities only
- total number of negative mentions of political parties and personalities.
The first three units of measurement were designed to address the requirement of equitable access by considering the amount of time given to political units and representatives. The fourth and fifth units of measurement were included to show which candidates were of topical concern. The latter two measures do not have the same statistical value as the first three but were included to give an overview of the prominence given to a politician or the severity of attacks. As the remit of the project was also to monitor inflammatory or hate language, the statistical information on the number of negative mentions was complemented by a transcript of those mentions, thus providing a check on the nature and level of inflammatory language used.
Detailed guidelines were laid out to ensure uniformity in the monitoring process. For example, measuring the time share of any political units in a news period may appear straightforward and allowing little discretion. Examples of the guidelines highlight the possible areas of difficulty:
- for mixed stories, all parties mentioned receive the whole time of the story (this was dictated by the difficulty of dividing reports covering groups of parties)
- reports or clips of officials of parties count as time for parties
- elected politicians carrying out their official duties inside BiH were not counted as campaign related
- reports of sister parties in other countries were not counted as campaign related if BiH was not mentioned
- reports on non-attendance of politicians or parties was not counted as time given to political units.
These elections presented particular problems for the monitors simply in terms of defining a "political unit". The elections were taking place at various levels simultaneously including Presidential, Parliamentary of BiH Federation, Presidential of Republika Srpska, Cantonal and Municipal. On top of this several parties had formed coalitions that varied in composition according to the level of the election!
The monitoring centres taped the core stations over the relevant periods. The monitors then watched in detail any programmes with political content. They then had to determine if the content had to do with campaigning for the elections, excluding reports of official duties of office holders. Having narrowed down the relevant material to be reviewed the monitored then completed tick sheets, timing the items and recording ticks for the number of mentions (positive, negative and neutral) of candidates or parties and noting the type of programme covering a political unity - for example, political advertising spots or debates. Data from the tick sheets was then inputted on to spreadsheets and depicted in daily and then weekly graphs.
Each monitor was able to monitor two or three stations per evening, with some tick sheet work being done as the programme was broadcast. The detailed analysis which required several reviews of the tapes. A statistics team then collated the data and produced the graphs.
The data were presented over seven-day periods to exclude distortion caused by the appearance undue prominence given to one party or personality as a result of newsworthiness on any particular day. The graphs were produced during the election period with the aim, successful in one instance, of modifying the bias towards one party or group of parties shown by individual stations.
The Media Experts Commission acknowledged that this model did not provide detailed qualitative analysis in any depth: that would have been impossible with the human resources available. Nevertheless the analysis provided served its purpose: it showed that all but one of the stations monitored had a significant bias in favour of one or another party and enabled the MEC to challenge those stations for their violations of the PEC Rules.
See Bosnia: media monitoring methodology for a fuller explanation of the media monitoring methodology in Bosnia.
