| Measuring Change in Media Development |
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By Lavinia Mohr, Deputy General Secretary and Director of Programmes, WACC
Participants in a symposium organised by the Catholic Media Council of Germany (CAMECO) in Bad Honnef near Bonn in October 2009 debated these and many other questions. Among the participants were representatives of organisations such as Deutsche Welle Akademie, the Global Forum for Media Development, International Media Support, Internews Network, Media in Cooperation and Transition, Panos, Search for Common Ground, USAID , the World Association for Christian Communication, the World Bank Communication for Governance and Accountability Program, and the World Federation of Science Journalists, as well as university researchers and independent consultants. According to Andrew Puddephatt of London-based Global Partners, up to $1.5 billion is spent annually on media development assistance, but very little attention is paid to sustainability in a rapidly changing media environment. The one too many media model is rapidly being replaced by peer to peer communication in which there are no longer authorities, not even in journalism. The proliferation of mobile devices is bringing about the collapse of traditional media business models, especially for newspapers. Increasingly, it is the data aggregators rather than the data creators who are succeeding in making money. A. S. Panneerselvan of Panos Asia pointed out that the traditional media are thriving in Asia, and in some places are making a clear contribution to reducing conflict and maintaining peace. He underlined that any approach to measuring the impact of media development work will go astray if it sees the media as an agent of change – media can be a catalyst for change but not an agent of change. Thinking of the media as an agent of change is equivalent to instumentalising the media. Dr Helge Ronning of the University of Oslo, who has carried out a test of UNESCO’s media development indicators framework (see below) in Mozambique stated more broadly that it is misguided to tie the value of communication to development goals – communication is a right, and therefore has its own value independent of development goals. The symposium examined the strengths and weaknesses of several frameworks and methods for measuring the quality of the media landscape within countries. These included the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung’s African Media Barometer, whose objective is to assess the media landscape of a country over time and provide civil society with a strategic advocacy tool for media reform. The Media Sustainability Index, carried out by IREX and supported by USAID, assesses the conditions for independent media in 76 developing countries. Several participants thought that United States itself could benefit from applying the index to an assessment of its own media landscape, citing examples of notable deficiencies. A new framework is UNESCO’s 2009 Media Development Indicators: A Framework for Assessing Media Development which cites WACC’s Global Media Monitoring Project as a recommended data source. It aims to be an analytic tool designed to help stakeholders assess the state of the media and measure the impact of media development programmes, and aims to be usable by journalists and news organizations, and citizens’ groups working to strengthen media on the local level. The symposium was the occasion for the launch of a media development monitoring and evaluation wiki. The wiki is still a work in progress, very much depending on contributions from users. The theme with the most content so far is media and conflict. Add this page to your favorite Social Networking websites 
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