Media monitoring: background and methodology

Media monitoring, the activity of monitoring the output of broadcast, print and online media, has been recognised as a valuable tool for change, capable of influencing the manner in which media perceives and reports on a specific subject.

Originally inspired by women rights’ movements and activists, the first Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP) was conducted by WACC (World Association of Christian Communication) volunteers in over 70 countries in 1995. Since then, every five years an increasing number of volunteers in more and more countries come together on the same day to analyse the coverage of women in their respective national media. Participants range from grassroots community organisations to university students and researchers, to media practitioners. The GMMP is now the largest and longest-running gender media monitoring exercise taking place globally.

The research findings are and have been useful for education, policy advocacy, public awareness, gender-equality/women’s rights activism, media and communication policy development, among other applications.

By adapting the long-standing GMMP methodology, the project Refugees Reporting will conduct a media monitoring exercise to assess the coverage of refugees’ issues in a number of European countries’ media. The media monitoring is the first step in the Refugees Reporting project, aimed at providing a detailed analysis of the representation of refugees in the news media.

The media monitoring is composed of two parts, a quantitative and a qualitative analysis. The quantitative analysis provides a detailed overview of how present are refugees in the news, what is the role they play, in what types of stories they are found, etc. Those articles which are deemed particularly worthy of a further analysis are then submitted for a qualitative analysis, which deals with the quality of the coverage.

The media monitoring is expected to take place during the course of two or three days in late May/early June, and the results will subsequently be analysed and compared. The media monitoring report will be launched in November.

 

Photo source: whomakesthenews.org / GMMP http://bit.ly/2nP7oSn

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