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GeoPoll Media Viewership Survey: Afghanistan

GeoPoll (2024), 24 slides

"Media Audience Universe Estimates: 67% of the adult Afghan population watches TV at least once a month, 38% listen to the radio." (Slide 9) "Internet Access and Use: 60% of Afghans on average access the internet on an average day, 28% Watch TV or videos online/on mobile on an average day, 61% Use ... more

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Afghanistan Media Audience Landscape

GeoPoll (2024), 3 pp.

"The GeoPoll Afghanistan Media Audience Landscape Establishment Survey comprised of 2,000 Computer Assisted Telephone Interviews (CATI) with respondents across the country, conducted in from December 2023 to January 2024. Based on the survey data, approximately 67% of the adult Afghan population wat ... more

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Media Mapping on Educational Content Production and Dissemination in Afghanistan

Aida Sahraoui Soler et al.

Paris: UNESCO (2024), 16 pp.

"Within the complex media and educational landscape of Afghanistan, characterized by the takeover by the de facto authorities, a study of the current Media-Based education was facilitated by the Afghanistan Independent Journalists Union (AIJU) and Integrity Watch Afghanistan (IWA) with the support o ... more

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Challenges and choices: Afghan women's media use and preferences amidst restrictions

London: BBC Media Action (2024), 2 pp.

"While most adult Afghans have access to some form of media platform, only around one in three have access to internet, with less than half of mobile users owning a smartphone. Men exhibit higher usage of radio and internet compared to women (52% male vs 43% female for radio and 36% vs 29% for inter ... more

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A survey of media consumption in Afghanistan

Mahdi Zaki, Zaher Modaqeq, Shahira Torab, Fiona Howie, Manju Gautham, Ibrahim Jabarkhail

London: BBC Media Action (2023), 34 pp.

"This report summarizes research that aimed to better understand Afghans' access to and preference for different media content and platforms, their trust in media, how people use and share mis- and disinformation and ways to counter these." (Publisher description)

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Impacts of Social Media on Public Policy Development in pre-Taliban Afghanistan

Hazrat Bahar

Global Media Journal - German Edition, volume 13, issue 2 (2023), 19 pp.

"The impacts of media, mainly social media, have attracted greater scholarly attention. However, their effects on public policy development and the decision-making procedure of a government have not been examined so far. Thus, this study examines such effects in pre-Taliban Afghanistan before August ... more

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Afghanistan Media Landscape: Key Results

London: BBC Media Action (2021), 1 p.

"TV is the most popular media platform. Majority of TV viewers and radio listeners watch and listen to those media weekly. Urban, educated and younger people watch TV more than rural, less educated and older people. Men listen to radio and use internet more than women [...] A nationally representati ... more

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Connecting with Homeland: Media Consumption of Afghan Diaspora in India

Farooq Gowhar

International Journal of Communication and Media Science, volume 8, issue 2 (2021), 5 pp.

"Afghan presence in India dates back centuries. It exists in the form of goods, language, cultural and political influences, and other subtler yet significant forms. The influx of Afghan students, traders, and medical tourists in India, especially post the 2001 regime change in Afghanistan, has give ... more

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Television and the Afghan Culture Wars

Wazhmah Osman

Urbana: University of Illinois Press (2020), 288 pp.

"Fieldwork from across Afghanistan allowed Osman to record the voices of Afghan media producers and people from all sectors of society. In this moving work, Afghans offer their own seldom-heard views on the country's cultural progress and belief systems, their understandings of themselves, and the r ... more

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Social Media in Afghanistan: Users and Engagement

Arcata, Calif.: Internews (2017), 74 pp.

"Access to and use of internet in Afghanistan has grown in the past decade to reach approximately 12% of the population. Social media penetration has followed the same course, challenging traditional media platforms and providing new platforms for public discourse. Social media carries the expectati ... more

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From a Refugee Perspective: Discourse of Arabic Speaking and Afghan Refugees and Migrants on Social Media from March to December 2016

UNHCR (2017), 46 pp.

"The main thing I really liked about this project is that UNHCR invested the resources for proper qualitative social media monitoring, as opposed to the purely quantitative analyses that we see so often and which rarely go beyond keyword counting. To complement the social media information, the team ... more

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Afghan Information Ecosystems: A Design Research Approach

Internews; Sayara Research (2017), 82 pp.

"Afghanistan has made great strides in establishing media and communications outlets. However, very little is known about the ways in which Afghans actually engage in information exchange. To inform work with the media and effectively enhance access to information in Afghanistan, Internews commissio ... more

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Afghan Media in 2014: Understanding the Audience

Altai Consulting; Internews (2015), 169 pp.

"In 2014, competition in the Afghan media sector has increased in order to attract diminishing advertising revenue. This has led to increased professionalization and a certain degree of segmentation with the introduction of specialist, niche channels. The pace of development of new outlets has slowe ... more

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Media Use in Afghanistan

Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG); Gallup (2015), 2 pp.

"The Afghan media scene has experienced tremendous growth in the post-Taliban period, buoyed by international involvement and the passage of a series of laws lending some protection to journalists. Though Reporters Without Borders listed Afghanistan’s media environment 128 out of 179 countries in ... more

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Afghanistan at a Glance: Findings from the World Poll. Media Use for News in Afghanistan

Gallup; Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) (2015), 40 slides

"Afghanistan had the highest rate of suffering in the world for 2013 and 2014. Those with a post-secondary education are the most avid media users for news overall. Highly educated Afghans were more likely to use TV, radio, Internet, SMS, and social media on a daily basis for news than other segment ... more

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Media Messaging and its Impact on Afghan Women: Survey Report

Cooperation for Peace and Unity; Afghan Women Rights (2015), 48 pp.

"Television remains the most popular medium in all provinces surveyed and among the different groups of respondents. It is also the most preferred source of information, followed by Radio. A great majority of the population watches TV on a daily basis. More than half of the population spends between ... more

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On Media, Social Movements, and Uprisings: Lessons from Afghanistan, Its Neighbors, and Beyond

Wazhmah Osman

Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, volume 39, issue 4 (2014), pp. 874-887

"From Tehran to Tahrir Square to Gezi Park-to mention only three key sites of protest made prominent in 2013-social media has been lauded as one of the key factors enabling popular uprisings and social movements. This has provided further hype for new or digital media, which were already being toute ... more

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Designs, Devices and Development: Audience Research as Creative Resource in the Making of an Afghan Radio Drama

Andrew Skuse, Marie Gillespie

Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies, volume 8, issue 1 (2011), pp. 132-153

"This essay analyses the role of audience research as a change agent in media development interventions in Afghanistan. It analyses how audience research in transnational contexts involves a complex set of intercultural negotiations and translations that contribute to the enduring relevance and sust ... ainability of the highly popular Afghan radio soap opera New Home, New Life. This is a ‘development drama’ that has been broadcast across Afghanistan since 1993. It is based on BBC Radio 4’s The Archers and produced by BBC Afghan Education Projects (BBC AEP). Audience research has been vital to forging a dynamic relationship between the creative teams who make the drama, the donors who pay for it, and the audiences who consume it. The article addresses three broad themes. First, we outline how data gathered in formative audience research, prior to the creation of the drama, provides the creative team with the dramatic raw material for the radio serial. The extensive qualitative data gathered by Afghan researchers in local milieux is translated so as to enable culturally diverse teams of writers and producers to ground the serial narratives in the lived experiences of its audiences, and to introduce multiple local perspectives on development issues. Second, we show how evaluative audience research, data gathered in the postproduction phase, plays a key role in providing critical audience interpretations of New Home, New Life’s dramatic themes. In so doing, it creates feedback loops that allow audiences to become active participants in the ongoing creation of the drama. The research designs and devices, developed over the last two decades to document the changing life-worlds of Afghan citizens-cum-audiences, are part of an ongoing set of transcultural encounters that contribute to strengthening the social realist appeal of the drama and to calibrating how far any given storyline can be pushed in terms of cultural propriety. Third, we examine how during periods of military conflict, when routine audience research becomes dangerous or impossible and audience feedback loops are disrupted, the writers and producers have to rely on their own personal and political experiences, often with unpredictable ideological consequences. We draw attention to the limitations and challenges of making dramas for development in highly charged politicised and postcolonial contexts. While, development dramas may be a cheap and effective way of dealing with certain informational needs, such as landmine awareness, they cannot redress social and structural inequalities or, as Western donors wish, eradicate opium cultivation." (Abstract) more

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Afghan Media in 2010: Synthesis Report

Eric Davin, Philibert de Mercey, Carlotta Tincati, Kinga Komorowska, Arezo Malakooti, Sébastien Duhaut

Altai Consulting; USAID (2010), 178 pp.

"In 2004-2005, the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Office of Transition Initiatives commissioned Altai Consulting to conduct the first comprehensive media evaluation of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, looking at the impact of the Afghan media on opinions and behav ... iors three years after the beginning of the country’s reconstruction. The evaluation found, among other things: that Afghans were avid and sophisticated media users and that cultural barriers to media use were less significant than previously expected; that the radio played a predominant role throughout the country; and that media are instrumental in social progress and education. However, since publication of that report1, Afghanistan’s media sector has seen important changes. To inform future assistance from the international community to the Afghan media, it was deemed necessary to assess the current state of the Afghan media – by reflecting a full and accurate audience profile, to determine program preferences, to measure the impact of the Afghan media on local opinions and behaviors and to gauge Afghan expectations in terms of programming and messaging. A large-scale research project was thus planned and conducted from March to August 2010. This research included a deep probe into the media sector and the public’s behaviors and expectations. The methodology used to achieved this included a combination of: literature review; direct observations; key informant interviews with most relevant actors involved in the media sector; 6,648 close-ended interviews in more than 900 towns and villages of 106 districts, covering all 34 provinces of the country; an audience survey on more than 1,500 individuals run daily for a week; about 200 qualitative, open-ended interviews; and 10 community case studies. Such an effort guarantees that results presented here are fairly representative of the Afghan population at large. This document provides a comprehensive synthesis of data collected during the survey. A database of media actors, 16 priority district reports, 10 case study reports, a complete description of the methodology and the original datasets from the main quantitative research and the audience research are publicly available, allowing anyone interested to access more focused information as needed." (Introduction, page 8) more

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The Impact of the BBC World Service Trust's Programme Afghan Woman's Hour: Results from a National Survey in Afghanistan

Andy Bhanot, Emily LeRoux-Rutledge

Safia Haleem (ed.)

Kabul: BBC World Service Trust (2009), 68 pp.

"1. Overall awareness of Afghan Woman’s Hour (AWH) in Afghanistan was found to be high; 50% of all those who had listened to the radio in the previous month were aware of AWH. Awareness was higher in the South Western region at 64% compared with the lowest level of awareness at 23% in the Hazarjat ... more