"This article analyses how international advocacy campaigns approach and define media freedom, and what influences this process. It does this through a two-year case study of the Media Freedom Coalition—an intergovernmental partnership of over 50 countries—that included 55 interviews with key st ... akeholders, observations, and document analysis. This revelatory case sheds light on how norms of media freedom are constructed and contested on the international stage, and their implications for journalists, media freedom and geo-politics. We show that the Coalition adopted a state-centric, accountability-focused, and negative understanding of media freedom. This discourse legitimized a narrow, reactive, and “resource-light” approach to supporting media freedom, focused on “other” countries. We argue that critical norm research provides a helpful prism for understanding this Coalition’s operations, and the global politics of media freedom more generally. These findings have important implications for understandings of “norm entrepreneurship,” “media imperialism,” and “media freedom” itself." (Abstract) more

"The purpose of this report is to evaluate the Media Freedom Coalition (MFC) in its first two years of operation, from 2019 to 2021. The MFC is a partnership of 50 countries working together to advocate for media freedom and the safety of journalists. Our independent report is based on over 100 inte ... rviews with relevant stakeholders; analyses of news coverage, social media commentary and public statements; and a survey of media freedom campaigners – as well as detailed case studies in Sudan and the Philippines. We find that, after two years, the Media Freedom Coalition is only partially achieving its objectives. It has taken some positive steps towards its ambitious goals including attracting a relatively large membership and establishing collegiate ways of working. However, partly because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the actions of the MFC have not been as rapid, bold, or visible as was initially promised. So far, its working methods have been slow and lacking transparency, its communications poor, its financial commitments small, and its political impacts have been minimal. Overall, the MFC requires a re-set and re-injection of energy and funds in the next two to three years if it is to achieve its original aims." (https://research-portal.uea.ac.uk) more