"This guidebook aims to give the reader an overview of the existing international media freedom measures and how they can be used. By introducing the methodology and pointing out the strengths and weaknesses, it allows the readers to better understand, judge and thus critically reflect the indices’ findings. This, in turn, enables them to ideally use and adopt the results for their own purposes. It addresses both stakeholders active in media development cooperation and journalists as well as all other people interested in this topic, such as politicians, academics or activists. The following five international and global media freedom indices will be introduced and analyzed: The Freedom of the Press Index by Freedom House; The Press Freedom Index by Reporters Without Borders; The Media Sustainability Index by the International Research & Exchanges Board (IREX); The African Media Barometer by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung; The Media Development Indicators by UNESCO. These five measures were selected for the analysis because they are the only initiatives that evaluate media freedom internationally and on a regular basis. Strictly speaking, these indices can be further divided into two subgroups: those that claim to measure media freedom and those that aim to measure the theoretically broader concepts of media development or media sustainability. But since media freedom is a crucial component of media development and media sustainability and because in practice it is difficult to properly distinguish between the two concepts, both are included in this analysis." (Introduction, page 7)