"National Public Radio (NPR) affiliate KCRW received a three-year grant from the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation in 2015 to spark public discourse about issues affecting disadvantaged and vulnerable populations in Los Angeles. It included initiatives to sponsor live events and to improve reporting acros
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s KCRW’s digital platforms. Its goals were to: 1. build capacity within KCRW’s newsroom to find and tell underreported stories; 2. increase coverage of social issues impacting vulnerable populations; 3. and find new ways to amplify coverage through multimedia reporting. The USC Norman Lear Center’s Media Impact Project (MIP) was invited to evaluate the project. Outcomes were very positive and transformed many aspects of the way KCRW conducted operations. Additionally, the funder garnered media attention on its issues through KCRW’s in-depth investigative reporting and cross-platform promotions. Content coding analysis revealed increased sophistication in KCRW’s investigative capacity by the end of the grant period. Journalists, staff professionals and administrators reported a renewed sense of pride in their work and increased skill sets at airing complex stories on the radio, on social media and at live forums. Employees exceeded what they thought they could accomplish, taking on additional responsibilities and fresh perspectives and discovering new ways to engage with a wider demographic of audiences." (Project summary, page 4)
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"This evaluation covers two independent projects implemented by BBC Media Action in Zambia. Tikambe provides information to young people about sexual reproductive health and rights and youth-friendly services via different platforms. Radio Waves supports independent media as a platform for dialogue
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and accountability. The evaluation concludes that the projects are relevant and achieved important results. In the future, the projects would benefit from strengthening their participatory approach in project design, sustainability considerations in the organisational capacity development of media actors, vulnerability profile and outreach (Tikambe) and budget design transparency (Radio Waves)." (Back cover)
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"Three key cross-cutting priority areas for the civil society and media sectors emerge from this analysis: Civic Education: Without wide public understanding of and support for democracy, it is possible for public opinion to be manipulated, or frustrations exploited, and for public support for Armen
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ia’s nascent democracy to be diminished or reversed. Enabling Environment: In the context of the fragile political environment, it is critical that laws, regulations, and processes that provide protections to the civil society and media sectors, and that define relationships between government and sector actors, are developed and established. Advocacy: Support for sector advocacy initiatives and for follow up monitoring of implementation constitutes a priority focus for donor efforts." (Executive summary, page 2)
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"The primary questions driving this assessment are: What are the principal drivers of extremism in Mauritania? What are the principal social fractures that have been, or could be, exploited by extremists? The table below displays the overall main drivers of VE in Mauritania, as well as the five subn
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ational assessment sites (Nouakchott, Nouadhibou, Trarza, Hodh el-Gharbi, and Assaba). Poor governance and relative deprivation are among the most pervasive push factors identified in this assessment, while ideology and social media are the main pull factors [...] The second main assessment question is: What is the role of the Mauritania media landscape within the context of VE? Section 4 addresses this question through a thorough assessment of the overall media landscape in Mauritania. We found that the Mauritanian media has the potential to be a key actor in efforts to counter VE in Mauritania. However, it needs a lot of capacity building and professionalization in order to be effective." (Pages 8-10)
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"This Mozambique Media Strengthening Program (MSP) final report is an overview of IREX’s implementation of a wide range of assistance activities to strengthen the media and healthrelated communications sectors in Mozambique over a seven-year period. These activities have significantly contributed
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to a free, open, diverse Mozambican media sector providing high quality information to citizens that promotes debate, accountability and development. Within the context of media strengthening, MSP focused on five thematic subject areas with some minor additions and modifications: (a) health and nutrition (HN), (b) gender, (c) human trafficking, (d) environment (umbrella term for biodiversity/wildlife trafficking/conservation/climate change) and (e) accountability and transparency, as well as on investigative journalism as a cross-cutting theme. While all themes were addressed at different times and in different contexts, in 2017, HN became a predominant theme. This integrated approach involved subject-specific HN communications training. What distinguished MSP from a pure HN project was the continued focus on building expertise in reporting on substantive subject matters, as well as a media capacity building focus. By combining (a) the development of strong community-based communication and media skills in the program beneficiaries with (b) the knowledge and use of simple, but effective HN messages, the program greatly increased its effectiveness, as it enabled and empowered program beneficiaries to continue to develop their own communication solutions (e.g., how to design a particular radio program) based on the messages and knowledge beneficiaries gained. While the successes of this program abound, there is much still to accomplish in supporting the media and communications actors and enacting a reorientation towards a true selfreliance of the sector led by local organizations through local strategy, local decision making and harnessing local revenue streams." (Executive summary)
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"Today, a typical journalist in Africa is a professional workshop attendee. Non-governmental organisations from every sector “train” journalists in their subject matter, often with content conceived in Western capitals by people with no experience in journalism or in the target countries. Journa
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lists go from workshop to workshop, turning up long enough to collect their per diems and write a puff piece. This approach is as costly as it is regrettable. In one African country, a media-development organisation with which I have worked spent more than $1-million of taxpayer money to produce a one-hour program on governance, which was then aired on community radio, its content so sanitised to appease local officials that few people tuned in. But even more problematic was the distortion to the domestic media market. To produce the program, the NGO recruited ten top journalists from established outlets and paid them as much as ten times their normal salary. Once the project was over, most of the journalists quit their old jobs in search of better pay in the aid and government sectors. From my experience, most African journalists know how to report a well-sourced story. What they lack are the resources to put this knowledge to use. The deficiencies of African media are best addressed as a business challenge, not a training problem." (Author)
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"My goal in this chapter is to place media development efforts within a specific frame: namely the actions of great strategic communicators (states, religions, transnational corporations, for example) as they seek to increase support for their general positions in the world. Development efforts can
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be, and often are pursued for altruistic purposes, and they are often couched within an altruistic frame. The altruistic impulse and justification is significant and praiseworthy; but enduring development efforts in the long run are perceived to se rve national economic and political interests as well. Happily, values and interests are often in sync, but not always. No government, even that of the United States or Great Britain, can sustain investment efforts over decades without convincing arguments (and maybe proof) that the expenditures benefit the investor society as well as that of the target recipient. How does one parse this all out? If it is the case that societies act out of values and interests, can one describe a scaffolding of decision-making? Over the years, I have tried to build a frame for thinking about these ques tions through the concept of a market for loyalties, a process of analysis aimed at rendering competing interests more transparent as media systems are contemplated and funded, both within states and transnationally. In general, according to this framing, regardless of the rhetoric in which they are embedded, development efforts have preferred outcomes in terms of the structure of the target society in terms of how inclusive or democratic the society should be, and which entities gain and which lose or have the potential to gain or lose influence." (Pages 20-21)
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"Centre of Investigative Journalism (CIJ Nepal) has made a contribution to introducing and promoting investigative journalism and its activities need to be continued, particularly given the efforts of Nepal to democratize and the introduction on new governance structure in the country. Generally, th
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e project implemented by CIJ Nepal and Vikes has contributed to investigative journalism in Nepal and to the development of confidence among journalists to take on investigative assignments. Some trainees also received awards and citations. The trainings have also provided journalists opportunities to spend more time researching stories and working with mentors to produce copy. However, there also were areas where CIJ Nepal and Vikes could take actions to further enhance the overall quality and impact of the investigative projects." (Page 6)
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"The Balkans Media Assistance Program (BMAP) (2017 – 2021, $8 million) is a USAID funded initiative focused on making media more competitive in local and regional marketplaces and strengthening the sustainability of the independent media sector across the Balkans, particularly in the digital space
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." (Overview)
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"This article aims to fill a gap in the academic literature on how employees at a media development intermediary construct meaning of their work. Based on in-depth interviews with 18 employees of Internews, this research shows that employees believe the organization has “evolved” from the past t
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o include the entire “information ecosystem” today. Themes that emerged include a focus on information as a solution, an emphasis on local communities, the desire to give voice to marginalized communities, and a practice of listening. Interviewees strictly adhered to official narratives of their work and to contemporary development orthodoxy, perhaps because of group think and participant bias. Despite these narratives, we have to consider the ulterior motives of media development as a neocolonial project. Although some of the results may seem obvious, there is merit in documenting these findings to demystify media development work today." (Abstract)
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"This report presents findings and recommendations from the whole-of-Intermediate Result (IR) evaluation of activities generated from the USAID Civil Society and Media Project Appraisal Document (PAD) created in 2015. The evaluation included two current activities—Liberia Accountability and Voice
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Initiative (LAVI) and Liberia Media Development (LMD)—and incorporated information and interviews from the Civil Society and Media Leadership (CSML) activity, which predated the PAD. The evaluation determined how USAID activities made progress toward achieving the Project Purpose—Increased influence of citizens in the governance of public goods and services—and provided recommendations to inform development of a future Civil Society and Media strategy.
The evaluation found that the PAD contributed to increasing opportunities for civil society organizations (CSOs) and media outlets to play a “watchdog” role over governance. However, evidence is lacking that (1) CSOs can sustain the coalition approach beyond current USAID support, (2) CSOs can use the coalition approach to mobilize citizens more broadly to engage with government decision makers, and (3) media outlets can increase the quality of news and information disseminated to citizens.
Critical gaps exist in making connections among the three stakeholder groups within governance accountability systems: (1) Political Leaders, (2) CSOs and Media Outlets, and (3) Citizens. A key priority for a future PAD would be to create interactive information and activity loops that better connect political leaders to citizens, using CSO coalitions and media outlets as channels through which citizens directly engage with government institutions." (Abstract)
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"Media development specialists and activists need a concept of media development that understands and addresses the deeply political nature of the media as an institution. We also need a way to cope with rapidly changing technology and the media's increasingly global nature. Media development is as
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much about building strong political foundations for independent media as it is about high-quality journalism. It also requires integration and scaling up within broader democratic governance reforms. This type of media development depends on engaging with a wider group of actors at the count ry level, not just journalists, editors and other media agents, but also civil society, private sector, and government representatives. It requires activists to develop more sophisticated analysis and policy positions that consider the broader institutional and governance framework for the media. For the purposes of this essay, I will refer to this effort to engage with a wider group of change agents in society on media reforms as a demand-driven approach. Media reform efforts that fail to engage with local actors and build consensus and sustainable structures within their societies can actually impede media development and the critical freedoms and responsibilities on which it rests. While journalistic skills and business models for the news media are critically important, sustainable reforms in media systems require an environment that produces two outcomes: (1) political acceptance of open debate, vigorous fact-finding, and open dissent; and (2) quality journalism based on fairness, high ethical standards, and accuracy." (Page 31)
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"This dissertation explores audiovisual assistance programs through an examination of the largest such program: the EU’s ACPCultures+, which since 2008 has awarded over 50 million Euros to nearly 60 audiovisual training programs, distribution initiatives, and production projects in sub-Saharan Afr
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ica and the Caribbean. Using textual and policy analyses, in-depth interviews, and both digital ethnography and multi-sited ethnographic research in Brussels, Addis Ababa, and Nairobi, I analyze three case studies of projects funded by ACPCultures+ – a screenwriting course in Kenya, a pan-African video-on-demand platform, and the first Ethiopian film to screen at Cannes film festival – while tracing the circulation of the program’s aims and policies from its headquarters in Brussels to audiovisual professionals in Africa and the Caribbean. These cases show how, as ACPCultures+ grapples with media diversity in an era of globalization, it builds on postwar histories of both international development and EU cultural and audiovisual policies in ways that simultaneously enable and constrain media industries in the Global South. Ultimately, this research demonstrates how audiovisual assistance programs are an underexamined piece of the global media landscape in which Northern policies and Southern practices together can reframe debates about media and cultural hegemony and suggest new ways of conceptualizing the geographies of audiovisual industries and policy." (Abstract)
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"Le forum Médias et Développement propose aux médias partenaires de CFI en provenance d’Afrique, d’Asie, d’Europe et du monde arabe de débattre, de s’interroger et de croiser leurs regards sur l’ensemble de ces questions. Tous se retrouveront à Paris pour ce moment unique d’échange
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, les 11 et 12 décembre 2019, afin de partager leurs pratiques, leurs solutions, leurs difficultés et leurs innovations." (Page 2)
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This Code of Ethics serves to inform beneficiaries, donors and the public of the internal guidelines, whereby IMS maintains the highest standards of integrity, governance, financial management, partnerships and implementation of our mission. This Code of Ethics consists of three parts: A brief intro
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duction to IMS; Guiding Principles (principles must be adhered to, when in a business relationship with IMS); Code of Conduct (outlines mandatory courses of action for specific situations). The principles and the standards of conduct set out in this Code of Ethics must be adhered to by: (List is non-exhaustive) IMS staff, Members of the board of IMS, Entities and/or individuals partnering with IMS, Consultants hired by IMS. Failure to comply may lead IMS to terminate the relevant business relationship. The IMS Code of Ethics takes inspiration from the Code of Ethics adopted by the World Association of Non-Governmental Organizations on 5 March 2005.
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"This report examines the myriad ways that the agencies and bodies of the United Nations support the development of healthy media systems. Author Bill Orme highlights the role of four UN organizations in particular—UNESCO, UNDP, UNICEF, and DPO—and makes recommendations targeted to these agencie
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s, as well as to UN member states and donors. The UN should promote greater coordination among the UN agencies active in the media sector, following on the successes from the UN Action Plan for the Safety of Journalists. UNESCO and UNDP, in particular, have untapped synergies in this field. In post-conflict states, the UN’s mandate should explicitly include support for public access to information and the protection of journalists and independent media in those countries. In their support for 2030 Agenda implementation, member states should prioritize a broader and freer flow of public information on both the national and global levels on progress toward every 17 SDGs and their 169 associated targets. Bilateral and multilateral development programs should help accelerate the implementation of the SDG 16.10 (which commits all UN members to “protect fundamental freedoms,” including press freedom) by supporting voluntary national assessments of the status and effectiveness of access-to-information laws and the overall enabling environment for independent media." (Key findings)
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"GFMD members welcome the international recognition of media and journalism issues within the overall international development agenda, noting the common language it provides and the accountability tool it may offer towards encouraging governments (including donor countries) to live up to their comm
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itments. Some members caution, however, that there are risks in viewing 16.10, and the SDGs in general, both too broadly and too narrowly. This includes, for example, the wider parameters of access to information – which applies not only to journalists, but to civil society organisations, citizens, and others – as well as a danger that access to information might overshadow attention to violence agai nst journalists. Others suggest that 16.10 should be seen in the overall context of Goal 16 – that is: peace, justice, and public institutions – to ensure that media-related assistance continues to look at the fuller enabling environment of laws, policies, and actors that ensure plurality, safety, and viability. Furthermore, some GFMD members caution against getting stuck in the “silo” of 16.10. These members remind of the need to demonstrate that media and information are not just rights in and unto themselves, but they can also be enabling rights for others – such as gender equality and the environment – and thus important and relevant for the whole SDG agenda. This does not suggest instrumentalising media for the sake of contributing to other SDGs, but rather strengthening the role of media in serving as a watchdog, holding governments accountable, informing the public, providing a voice for the voiceless, and offering a platform for debate.10 The leading concern about an SDG approach, however, is that it is ill-suited for authoritarian governments that not only reject the international development agenda, but also international standards on human rights." (Conclusions)
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"This chapter is drawn primarily from Jane Madlyn McElhone's thirteen years of in-field experience in Myanmar and other nations in transition, as well as key informant interviews she conducted in 2017 and 2018 [...] Our discussion is driven by a series of interlinked questions. Who were the key medi
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a development actors during the time of the military junta, what kind of support did they offer, and who benefited from it? What were the assumptions driving the aid? With hindsight, what are the lessons learned that can be applied to Myanmar's contemporary media development sector, and to regional and international media development efforts? What is the legacy of the many years of pre-transition aid? What have we learned from the response to the Rakhine crisis?" (Pages 96-97)
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"This collection is the first of its kind on the topic of media development. It brings together luminary thinkers in the field—both researchers and practitioners—to reflect on how advocacy groups, researchers, the international community and others can work to ensure that media can continue to s
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erve as a force of democracy and development. But that mission faces considerable challenges. Media development paradigms are still too frequently associated with Western prejudices, or out of touch with the digital age. As we move past Western blueprints and into an uncertain digital future, what does media development mean? If we are to act meaningfully to shape the future of our increasingly mediated societies, we must answer this question." (Publisher description)
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