"The “Georgian Elections Observatory (#GEObservatory24)” was a short-term initiative aimed at fact-checking pre-election narratives leading up to the parliamentary elections on October 26, 2024, together with a few immediate post-election analyses. Unlike traditional fact-checking platforms, thi ... s project analysed entire narratives, combining political analysis with media scrutiny to provide a compre hensive understanding of the pre-election discourse. The project was supported by the Swedish Fojo Media Institute, the Georgian Investigative Media Lab (IML), and the University of Georgia (UG) Security, Policy, and Nationalism Research Center (UGSPN). This Fojo Media Insight offers several critical lessons for journalism, particularly in covering elections and political narratives such as the importance of comprehensive narrative analysis, the role of historical context, the manipulation of fear and utilisation of conspiracy theories, the instrumentalisation of identity issues, such as religion and theories. The discussion on electoral legitimacy highlights the critical role of the media in ensuring transparent and fair elections. Finally, this working paper underscores the need for international collaboration in journalism." (Back cover) more

"This study confirms the findings in our previous study (Jacobsson, et al., 2006) that more media competition does not always lead to increases in the level of media quality, captured by the IREX measure of professional journalism, thus challenging the dominant argument in the literature. The data s ... uggest that high levels of media competition can at best produce a very limited increase in professional journalism while, at worst, as in Africa, the opposite relationship prevails. Looking at the full population, there is some, but weak evidence of a curvilinear relationship indicating that more media competition can be a good thing up to a point." (Conclusions) more