"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
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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)
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"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
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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)
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"This report, part of the Center for International Media Assistance's "Media Reform amid Political Upheaval" series, re-views Sudan's media climate and examines the role of Sudan's government, media, foreign donors, and international me-dia assistance actors in attempting to foster change in a count
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ry that is among the most inhospitable environments in the world for independent media." (Pages 1, 2)
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"We find that there is a will for reform from the civilian part of the government, the international community, independent media professionals, and a handful of Sudanese CSOs. However, pushing for a free media is a low priority for most of the population, who have more urgent survival and security
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needs. Furthermore, the military/Islamist wing of the transitional government seems to want to control, not free, the media." (Conclusion, page 24)
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"No News Is Bad News (NNIBN) was an excellent programme in terms of effort, on the part of Free Press Unlimited (FPU), the European Journalism Centre (EJC) and all their partners. The programme has supported courageous, committed, energetic and initiative-taking partners who have promoted rights to
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access to information, investigative journalism, gender equality, media literacy, content and reach in and for media dark areas, and more. The international programme has achieved some significant milestones around safety of journalists. Most of the partners report increased capacity, stronger organisations and progress on key quality, advocacy and gender goals. Many are more sustainable than before the programme started. FPU has become a learning organisation with strong skills in research, advocacy and M&E. Thanks toNNIBN, FPU has also become a leading advocacy organisation for media freedom that plays a big role in shaping international networks and initiatives.
However, as evaluators we face a conundrum – on the one hand almost all the activities went well, the partners are satisfied, the funders are happy and colleagues in other agencies are, generally, admiring of FPU and EJC. Yet on the other hand, we see few clear decisive impacts at the national level – i.e. ‘a diverse and professional media landscape’ – which is the ‘impact statement’ in the Theory of Change. So why is it difficult to say what it amounted to? Firstly, the programme was probably too thinly spread across too many countries (some with only one or two partners) to really show an impact at the media landscape level as a whole. Which means that the ultimate objective of the Theory of Change is still out of reach in most regions and countries in the programme. Secondly, advocacy and human rights work in general is a slow process, requires working in coalitions (which FPU/EJC do), often invisible, too, and that when there is a breakthrough it is hardly ever acknowledged." (Executive summary)
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"Radio stations across Africa are facing unprecedented threats to their sustainability due to weak media markets, limited advertising revenue and intense competition. A more pragmatic understanding of viability and more flexible donor strategies can help these outlets stay on air and maintain their
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independence. Station managers must continually balance editorial independence, financial sustainability, and their mission to serve the public. Addressing these three challenges is not always compatible, and trade-offs are often inevitable. Successful stations are able to harness viable funding modalities without selling out and capitalize on management and operations techniques to expand reach without compromising quality content. Marginal improvements in the flexibility of media donors and the media assistance community can foster greater viability and independence for small outlets in challenging context." (Key findings)
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"When donors provide assistance to the media sector, they frequently back projects that aim to strengthen the media’s contribution to good governance in some way or another. This kind of funding is consistent with recent declarations made by the international community on the importance of protect
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ing independent media for the sake of democracy and development. Yet, in the bigger picture, donors still only commit a tiny fraction to this sector and appear to be responding slowly, if at all, to the unique challenges of press freedom in the digital age. Media assistance represented on average just 0.3 percent of total official development aid (ODA) between 2010 and 2015. Donor flows to media are small, but are holding steady. China is an increasingly active player in terms of global media aid flows, although its interventions are largely focused on developing infrastructure and take the form of loans rather than development grants." (Key findings)
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"This article looks at the relationship between four major newspapers in Nigeria and foreign donors. The discussion centres on the attractions and drawbacks of foreign donor funding from these newspapers’ point of view and highlights points of convergence and divergence in the agendas of the newsp
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apers and the international donors. The aim of the discussion is, through this case study of four newspapers, to highlight some issues pertaining to aid in the media sector, emphasising the perspective of the aid recipients, as opposed to the donors’, whose point of view tends to be more widely articulated." (Abstract)
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"The Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) has commissioned iMedia Associates (iMedia) to conduct a Capitalisation Exercise (CapEx) of its media assistance, with the primary objective of examining its current programmes and bringing out lessons learned. As the second output of this CapE
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x, iMedia has carried out a review of what other donors are doing on media assistance. As agreed, it focuses on current media support by five donors/agencies: DFID (UK Aid), Sida (Sweden), UNESCO, UNDP and the Knight Foundation. We have chosen the five donors to reflect the diversity of donor-types, namely two large and influential Western donors (UK’s DFID and Swedish Sida), agencies in the UN system (UNDP and UNESCO) and a well-endowed US-based private foundation (Knight Foundation). This review of other donors also synthesises key findings from a literature review of the wider media assistance sector in order to identify good practice and situate SDC’s approach in relation to other donors. Our emphasis is on current programmes, policy documents and funding mechanisms." (Introduction)
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"This is a review of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation’s (SDC) media assistance by consultants from iMedia. The aim is to capitalise on SDC’s experience of media over the last 10 years. The objective is to examine the organisation’s current media assistance programmes and bring
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out lessons learned. NB: this is not an evaluation report but it does end with some conclusions and recommendations offered from iMedia’s independent perspective." (Executive summary)
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"Since the early 1990s, media outlets in Sub-Saharan Africa have proliferated extraordinarily, freeing Africa's press and liberating the airwaves from monopoly by the state. This paper summarises these developments and analyses in how far foreign donors were catalysts of this development.
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Myers describes the motives and mechanisms of this aid, and discusses whether media proliferation necessarily led to pluralism and genuine freedom. She concludes that "considering the media sector as part of the wider political economy of a country is becoming more widespread in donor circles and, although there is still room for improvement, there is much greater recognition today that supporting a healthy media is a matter of encouraging a wider enabling environment. This requires attention not just to the media outlets themselves but to the laws on free speech, broadcasting regulations, etc." (CAMECO Update 1-2105)
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"As an introduction to this special issue this article deals firstly with defining and clarifying terms and concepts which are used in the context of international media assistance. Secondly, the themes of the different articles in this collection are enumerated: these are broadly the how to of medi
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a assistance, evaluation and the ongoing debate about proving impact of media assistance project; negotiating the tensions between the state and the media and finally, the fundamental question of why and to what purpose is assistance to the media sector given in the first place." (Abstract)
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"From this short survey of some key thinkers, can we conclude that there is a causal link between digital media and good governance? The sum of the arguments and cases presented here do not point to a causal link, but they certainly show that digital technology is shaping social movements and politi
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cal processes as never before. What is clear is that digital technology is a tool, and that, as such, it can be an important contributor to “bad” governance as well as “good.” It can help topple dictators, but it can also help authoritarian regimes oppress their citizens; it can empower people, and it can anesthetize and manipulate them [...] Of course, the question about a causal link between digital media and good governance is purposefully simple– even crude–in order to make a good title. The job of academics is to go beyond the simple journalistic headlines that have hailed “Twitter revolutions” on the one hand, or have dismissed “slacktivists” on the other. All the scholars profiled here clearly show that those who assume a simple relationship between digital technologies and political change are making serious mistakes. As ever, context is all." (Abstract)
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"From this short survey of some key thinkers, can we conclude that there is a causal link between media and good governance? Does the existence of a free media increase accountability and reduce corruption? Do media influence society in positive ways and liberate the individual? As one would expect,
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the short answer is “it depends.” There is no consensus or easy, single answer to these questions. Neither is there a set of recommendations in a report such as this one, apart from common-sense recommendations to those donors and policy-makers who may be reading, to thoroughly understand media and politics in a given country before intervening, as well as the caution to do no harm. It is hoped that this report has introduced and shone a light on academic research related to subject of media and democracy. There are obvious differences between the media environments that are studied by the scholars profiled above: established democracies (in the case of Norris), developing countries (Nyamnjoh, Berger, Sen, Reinikka and Svensson, Besley and Burgess), and fragile/post-conflict states (Allen, Putzel, and Stremlau), which show the importance of, above all, context." (Conclusion, page 34)
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"This report addresses the challenges of supporting independent media in countries where media freedoms are restricted, based on country case studies in Bangladesh, Cambodia, South Sudan, Syria and Uganda. According to Myers, the dilemmas of foreig
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n support include short-term donor strategies, the lack of reliable local partners, the patchy evidence of the positive impact of past media support, the management of inflammatory media coverage and sometimes hate speech in countries that face inter-ethnic tensions or sectarian conflict. On the other hand, the publication also details strategies that have had some measure of success like foreign and UN broadcasting, training and advocacy from the outside, emphasizing neutral and 'public interest' topics when working from inside a country and supporting local rights organisations and media advocacy groups. The study concludes - among other factors - that media should be a key area of political economy analysis, that media assistance should be incorporated more explicitly within broader development systems, and that support should concentrate on media outlets and not just on individual journalists." (CAMECO Update 2-2012)
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"This article examines the changing role of radio for development in sub-Saharan Africa as ‘new’ Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) increasingly enter the information landscape. Grounded in the empirical findings of a research programme – Radio, Convergence and Development in Af
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rica (RCDA) – it explores the potential for convergent communication technologies to improve knowledge transfer and knowledge sharing between development actors at all levels. By drawing on research carried out as part of the RCDA programme, this article raises questions about the ability for radio broadcasters to act as ‘knowledge intermediaries’ in this context – brokering and translating information about development issues between international non-governmental organisations (NGOs), local NGOs, grassroots advocacy groups and local beneficiaries. It draws attention to the barriers impeding their ability to fulfill this role by highlighting issues related to ICT convergence, capacity, funding and ‘NGO-isation’." (Abstract)
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"A National Conversation' is a 5-year project funded by DFID's Governance and Transparency Fund (GTF) delivered by the BBC World Service Trust (BBC WST). Its purpose is to 'enhance media's capacity to cover governance issues by increasing transparency, accountability and citizen participation in med
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ia'. It covers Angola, Sierra Leone and Tanzania, has a total budget of £5 million and runs from 2008 to 2013. This mid-term review, by independent media consultant Mary Myers, finds that the quality of the work has been good and the progress to date has been fairly good. The BBC WST has taken on an ambitious task and is delivering an innovative and, at times, highly sensitive project with commitment, hard work, attention to high standards and efficiency. In terms of progress against the log-frame indicators, many of the objectives are in line to be achieved by the end of the project, despite a few short-comings. The project is particularly strong on media development and co-productions with partner broadcasters. The training and mentoring work done so far is probably the element showing the biggest impact at this stage. Some other objectives have only partially been achieved and benefits and shortcomings are finely balanced. This applies particularly to the research side of the project." (Executive summary, page 4)
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