"This report examines seven central areas of media development—funding, digital media, sustainability, media law, journalists' safety, journalism education, and monitoring and evaluation. It also delves in-depth into four areas deserving of greater attention: citizen journalism, investigative jour
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nalism, community radio, and media literacy. The report recommends to expand funding, to prioritise long-term commitment, to better coordinate and cooperate, to integrate digital media into all aspects of media development, to strengthen citizen journalists' capacities, to teach media business skills, to emphasize legal issues, to support investigative journalism, to address impunity for journalist attacks, to modernize journalism education, to invest in community radio and to embed evaluation into all projects." (commbox)
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"Press freedom indices such as those administered by Freedom House, IREX, and Reporters Without Borders have emerged as crucial tools, not only for the general public, but also for donors, implementers, and academics in their attempts to understand the relationships among media assistance, democrati
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zation, and other forms of development. Bringing together a variety of viewpoints and perspectives on evaluating media assistance, Measures of Press Freedom and Media Contributions to Development offers a critical reflection on the theories and tools of measurements that are used by the academic, donor, and civil society communities. A variety of theoretical and geographic perspectives are drawn upon, offering a timely debate from both academics and practitioners." (Publisher description)
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"A wide array of media development practitioners, donors, international broadcasters, and methodologists, all with extensive experience working in media initiatives in conflict environments met in Caux, Switzerland, in December 2010, to establish the Caux Guiding Principles, whose full text is in th
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is report. Based on a careful appraisal of the current status of monitoring and evaluating media interventions in conflict countries, the Caux Principles outline measures that stakeholders can take to improve evaluation. The Caux Principles urge those working in media and conflict initiatives to take several concrete steps to improve evaluation. These include enabling better collaboration between donors and implementers, expanding financial support for evaluation, encouraging realistic and honest assessments of project successes and failures, designing flexible evaluation plans that are sensitive to changing conditions on the ground, and engaging with local researchers." (Abstract)
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"This guide will take you through the essential steps for designing an evaluation of your community information project. These steps explain what to do and consider at different stages of the evaluation process: 1. Describe your project and identify your target audience. 2. Identify the evaluation
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s purpose and key questions. 3. Design the evaluation using effective methods. 4. Communicate and report the evaluation findings to make decisions and take action. We have included tips, tools and examples from community information projects that are currently being implemented by several grantees of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation’s Community Information Challenge (KCIC)." (Introduction, page 4)
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"This report maps the evolution of evaluation and donor decision making in media development over the last two decades. Through interviews with media development donors, implementers and academics, we examine major donor perspectives on monitoring and evaluation (M&E), the main challenges within med
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ia development M&E, how donors define its goals and methods, and how they incorporate M&E into their funding decisions, if at all. The goal of this report is to aggregate the expertise of those experts with practical experience in all aspects of media development M&E. We find a vast majority of those interviewed believe there has been an increased emphasis on M&E, many report challenges when designing and implementing M&E, and donors do not always tie their funding decisions to M&E." (Executive summary)
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"The first part of this publication provides insight into the media development practices and policy frameworks of France, Germany, Norway and the United Kingdom while the second part deals with different issues and projects, such as the role of media for social transformation in Africa and coordina
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tion of international donors and implementers. The contributions to this publication indicate a broad mutual understanding of the role of, and strategies for, media development. Four common characteristics can be highlighted. First, media assistance is seen as an integral part of democracy support, mainly due to the role of media as a guarantor of accountability and platform for public discourse. Second, media assistance requires not only journalism training, but a sector approach including all levels of the media sector, as professional editorial and financial management, capable professional associations, and an enabling regulatory environment. Third, financial sustainability is of paramount importance for a functioning independent media sector, and media development cooperation must become more active in this area. Fourth, closer cooperation and partnerships among donors and implementers should be encouraged." (Executive summary)
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"The organizations that conduct country rankings should continue to increase technical sophistication, cultural neutrality, and transparency. In particular, continued attention must be paid to digital media, notably the Internet and mobile phones, which now number approximately 4.6 billion worldwide
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. Donors and implementers of media assistance, meanwhile, should keep up efforts to find better ways to monitor and evaluate specific programs and to share the resulting information with other aid organizations. At a time of financial shortfalls, foundations and other funding bodies should assure that assessment of media quality at both the national and the program level receives the attention (and the money) that it deserves." (Executive summary, page 5)
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"Ziel der hier vorgelegten Studie ist es, analog der Vorgaben des PriME-Handbuchs 2008 von InWEnt, gemäß der Kriterien für Evaluation von Entwicklungszusammenarbeit nach OECD-DAC, unter Rückgriff auf angelsächsische Modelle für PM+E im Bereich der Medienentwicklungszusammenarbeit sowie unter R
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ückgriff auf die kommunikationswissenschaftliche Literatur ein Konzept für künftige systematische Evaluierungen der mittelfristigen Wirkungen des IIJ-Programms zu entwickeln, das über die Evaluierung unmittelbar nach Ende der Weiterbildungsmaßnahme hinausgeht. Mit Blick auf die bereits vom IIJ formulierten Programmziele zu prüfen ist der Erfolg von Capacity-Building-Maßnahmen auf Ebene der individuellen Akteure (Journalisten), auf Ebene von Organisationen (Redaktionen) sowie auf Systemebene. Hierzu wird eine Methodenkombination (Triangulation) empfohlen, die aufeinander aufbauend sowohl mit quantitativen als auch mit qualitativen Methoden arbeitet und außer der Ebene der Akteure (Journalisten) insbesondere die Ebene der Organisationen (Redaktionen) einbezieht. Um einen ökonomischen Umgang mit Ressourcen sicherzustellen, wird grundsätzlich empfohlen, mit Online-Befragungen zu arbeiten und ergänzend Telefon-Befragungen sowie fallweise vor Ort Face-to-Face-Interviews durchzuführen. Im Rahmen der Studie werden folgende PM+E-Tools für das IIJ entwickelt: Fragebogen für die Online-Befragung der Alumni (quantitativ), Fragebogen für die ergänzende Online-Befragung von Referenzpersonen der Alumni (quantitativ), Leitfaden für telefonische Interviews mit Alumni/Experten in den Zielländern (qualitativ), Leitfaden für Face-to-Face-Interviews mit lokalen Partnern (qualitativ). Der Fragebogen für die Online-Befragung als zentrales PM+E-Tool wurde erfolgreich einem Pre-Test unterzogen. Die Studie schließt mit einem Analyseraster für die Auswertung von im Rahmen von PM+E-Maßnahmen gewonnenen Daten, um gemäß der PriME-Qualitätsschleife institutionelles Lernen zu ermöglichen." (Zusammenfassung, Seite 6)
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"This report provides an assessment of U.S. international media development efforts, both public and private, and calls on future efforts to be more long-term, comprehensive, and need-driven. Recommending a more holistic assistance approach, the report looks at the international media development fi
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eld from a number of perspectives: funding, professional development, education, the legal-enabling environment, economic sustainability, media literacy, new media, and monitoring and evaluation. The report's recommendations include: establishing media development as its own sector of international assistance rather than only as a part of other development efforts as is the current trend; taking longer-term approaches to projects; engaging the local media community more in project designand implementation; improving journalists' professional skills and ethical standards; providing greater support to improve the legal-enabling environment; emphasizing media literacy; building stronger media management skills; integrating new technology; refining monitoring and evaluation methods; improving coordination among donors and implementers; integrating communication for development strategies in overall media assistance efforts." (CAMECO Update 5-2008)
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"Having a vibrant media scene is a necessary prerequisite to human development and good governance. But, the time has come for us, media practitioners and support organisations, to accept and recognise that this is too complex to bring about on our own. It would be prudent to recognise the limitatio
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ns of our sector, and create appropriate evaluation and impact assessment tools. The existing tools and methodologies are devised to give a macro picture of the overall environments but fail to clearly demarcate the roles played by various actors: State, Judiciary, Executive, Civil Society and Media. Media is just one contributing factor, albeit an important one at that. Hence, it is imperative to track the spheres of influence wielded by the sector so that support organisations are not misled into tracking and measuring overall environments while attempting to quantify the impact that media support organisations have in the process of change." (Page 2)
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"The findings from this research reveal the complexity of delivering journalism training and the challenges involved in capturing evidence of impact. Content analysis is a useful tool for measuring change in media output. It can both inform training delivery and provide evidence of improvements to o
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utput after training has taken place. The detailed and systematic collection and analysis of data can detect subtle changes in content, presentation of output and production elements that might not be captured by other research techniques. Although content analysis provides evidence that the output has changed it may not necessarily be a direct result of the intervention. Content analysis records media output - it does not measure the situation under which the news is produced. For example, during the training period managers might have introduced editorial guidelines or style guides to the organisation independently of the training intervention. Changes in output might be attributable to the actions of management rather than the training experience. Content analysis is also limited to measuring changes to output only – not to the skills acquired by particular trainees. For example, a trainer worked with the news room team to produce a radio package - at the last minute the management refused to broadcast the piece due to editorial policy. Although the improved content was not broadcast, and therefore not included in the content analysis, journalists acquired skills in the production process." (Research learnings, page 8)
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"The symposium Measuring Change. Planning, Monitoring, Evaluation in Media Development focused on the utilisation aspect of evaluation1: The adding of “Planning” to “Monitoring and Evaluation” in the subtitle indicates that emphasis was laid on learning from monitoring and evaluation experie
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nces, to facilitate the improvement of existing projects and programmes at all levels, from planning to implementation and follow-up." (Executive Summary)
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"This note offers a brief and non-technical introduction to indicators and monitoring tools relevant to communication for development in Danida’s countries of cooperation. It is primarily aimed at supporting staff at Danish representations or at HQ responsible for preparing and managing Danish bil
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ateral development assistance. The note may also be of assistance to those in the partner organisations of Danish aid who are responsible for monitoring, their Danida advisers, and consultants who assist in preparing and managing programmes and projects. [...] This note contains a background chapter on the strategic framework and types of Danish support for communication and development (Chapter 2), followed by a presentation of internationally defined goals, indicators and targets (Chapter 3). Subsequently, Chapter 4 addresses the issue of objectives and indicators at the national level, i.e. in PRSPs. Finally, Chapters 5, 6 and 7 are concerned with the level of the sector itself and the Danish support for it (SPS - sector programme support), discussing relevant indicators and related monitoring tools and methods at this level." (Introduction)
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Provides a mappping of 26 initiatives to develop indicators of media development and their respective methodologies, and analyses these initiatives in terms of their value and relevance to the priorities of the IPDC. The paper also proposes sample indicators and data sources for five principal media
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development outcomes which are broken down into separate categories.
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"This Guide complements the Practical Guidance Note on Right to Information, which provided guidance on approaches for designing and implementing programmes in this area. It builds on this knowledge, and focuses on the monitoring and evaluation of those programmes, paying particular attention to the
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use of appropriate indicators, including gender and pro-poor indicators. It outlines the basic principles of programme evaluation, but concentrates on assessing outcomes. It outlines four broad areas of right to information that must be considered in any context for a thorough evaluation. These are: (1) the legal regime for the right to information; (2) the implementation of right to information legislation by government; (3) the use of right to information by the general public and civil society; and (4) the use of right to information by marginalised group. It then suggests questions for each area, and derives from these typical baseline assessment features, outputs and outcomes." (Abstract)
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