Building Global Support for Independent Journalism and Diverse Media
By Ying Chan
The University of Hong Kong
Notes for Peabody Seminar, New York City
October, 2005
While the global media conglomerates seem to be abandoning serious journalism, I am also seeing hope in the emergence of independent media in many communities, created by visionaries and pioneers. I believe we are witnessing a profound paradigm change in the media industry, propelled by unprecedented technology advances.
The buzzwords for today’s media are convergence, integration, and globalization. Yet even as the media system of the West is expanding via transnational capital, it is being challenged by new and emerging media forms.
Research Summary Report: African Media Development Initiative
BBC World Service Trust
Fostering a stronger media in Africa is an indispensable part of tackling poverty, improving development and enabling Africa to attain its development goals. This Research Summary Report of the findings of the African Media Development Initiative (AMDI) provides a unique set of insights showing how donors, investors, media and media development organisations can collaborate in supporting and strengthening Africa’s media sector.
The Initiative was the most extensive independent survey of the state of the media across 17 sub-Saharan African countries: Angola, Botswana, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal, Somalia, South Africa, Sierra
Leone, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Copies of the individual country reports are included.
The study aimed to: assess the key changes and developments in the media sector in Africa over the past five years; to show how training and capacity building activities have contributed to the development of the media; and to identify future actions with the greatest potential impact on the development of the media sector in Africa.
Africa Policy Research Series: Kenya Communicating with Policymakers About Development Issues
By David Montez
Based on in‐depth interviews with senior Kenyan officials as part of the AudienceScapes research project
January 2010
InterMedia conducted in‐depth interviews with senior Kenyan government officials and policy influencers outside government (collectively referred to in this report as “policy actors”), to find out how they gather, assess, share and disseminate information critical to development policy work. The aim was to understand how external stakeholders, particularly members of the international development community, can most effectively engage and assist these policy actors.
The 15 interviewees described several measures that development organizations can take to improve the policy information environment. They also mentioned several challenges in communicating with the public about development issues but also suggested some creative solutions.
Africa Policy Research Series: Ghana Communicating with Policymakers About Development Issues
By Hannah Bowen
Based on in‐depth interviews with senior Ghanaian officials as part of the AudienceScapes research project
January 2010
InterMedia conducted in‐depth interviews with 15 senior Ghanaian policy actors, comprising mostly senior politicians and bureaucrats, as well as a few influential figures outside government. The interviews focused on how the policy actors gather, assess, share and disseminate information critical to development policy work. The aim was to understand how external stakeholders, particularly members of the international development community, can most effectively engage and assist these policymakers.
The policy actors showed substantial overlap in information source preferences and media use habits, as well as in the ways they share information with fellow policy actors. They highlighted several actions that development organizations could take to improve the policy information environment. They also described many challenges in communicating with the public about development issues, as well as offering some creative solutions.
The Impact of Media Laws on Arab Digital and Print Content
By Naomi Sakr
Background Paper for Nagla Rizk’s study on The Institutional Context for Knowledge in the Arab Countries
August 2008
Report themes:
Chapters 2 and 3 of this report deal with over-arching laws in the form of constitutions and, where relevant, emergency laws. Constitutions are assumed to set out basic principles about the separation of executive, legislative and judicial powers and checks on abuse of power. The report shows how the still dominant position of the executive branch of government affects media law and thus media output.
Chapters 4 and 5 go on to examine specific laws affecting the printed press and broadcasting. They look at the negative effects of restrictive licensing regimes and associated financial deposits, fines and suspensions, highlighting the market distortions and rigidities these create, especially in cases where the licensing system lacks consistency and transparency.
Chapters 6 and 7 show how restraints on film production and book publishing not only undermine a potentially lucrative export business but also have knock-on effects for television content, given that successful films and television dramas are often drawn from novels. In Chapter 8, the licensing of Internet Service Providers and Internet cafés is discussed, with reference to laws that are invoked to censor websites and blogs.
Chapter 9 draws on the analysis in the preceding chapters to make recommendations. Recommendations highlight measures that could help the media to promote greater accountability among public officials and revitalize the Arab region’s creative industries. Recommendations related to specific countries deal tackle emergency laws, Internet access, and liberalization of the broadcast sector and film industry.
The Actual and Potential Role of the Media in Promoting Women’s Economic Rights in the South Mediterranean Region
By Naomi Sakr
Overview paper for the Media Panel at the Euromed Policy Conference on Women’s Economic Rights: Making a Difference in the Mediterranean, in Brussels
November 2008
The media landscape of the southern Mediterranean reflects the impact of digitalisation and convergence, with a proliferation of scores of television channels plus diverse uses of the Internet, from blogging to social networking and sharing of video, whether user-generated or captured from TV. Making sense of the changes for the purpose of developing strategies for advocacy through the media, including media campaigns to promote women’s economic rights, requires some consideration of how producer-consumer relationships work in media, and where media sources fit in. It calls for awareness of existing global and regional initiatives aimed at advancing women’s rights through the media. This overview paper was commissioned to cover four themes:
- media images that impede women’s economic potential;
- ways in which the media can support women’s economic empowerment;
- effective ways for policy makers and development professionals to reach out and engage the media in promoting an agenda for change;
- ways to hold the media accountable for their coverage.
The paper deals with these issues in the same order that they are listed above. In doing so it challenges widespread assumptions about ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ images and highlights opportunities for raising awareness in an unforgiving media environment. It identifies a toolkit for effective advocacy of gender equality through the media that is freely available over the Internet, and discusses localised gaps in an international effort already under way to hold media outlets to account for their representations of women and coverage of women’s economic rights.
Foreign Support for Media Freedom Advocacy in the Arab Mediterranean: Globalization from Above or Below?
By Naomi Sakr
School of Media, Arts and Design, University of Westminster, UK
Recent structural changes to the Arab audio-visual media scene have encouraged an increasing number of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) involved in media freedom advocacy to launch initiatives aimed at making Arab broadcast media more pluralistic and boosting the independence and professionalism of broadcast journalists. Some interventions follow a top-down formula, sidestepping existing institutions that may be undemocratic, whereas others seek to work for change from below and within. This article, while conceptualizing such divergence in terms of Falk’s distinction between globalization from-above and globalization-from-below, also follows Wilkin in questioning whether these two categories can plausibly be separated from each other. Using two case studies of organizations that channel foreign grants into media-related activism in countries such as Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Palestine, the essay explores how separate these categories may be in practice and assesses the validity of claims that foreign funding of advocacy NGOs depoliticizes and fragments civil society.
Friend or Foe? Dependency Theory and Women’s Media Activism in the Arab Middle East
By Naomi Sakr, Research Associate in the Communication and Media Research Institute at the University of Westminster, London, UK, and a consultant on media and development in the Middle East to several international organizations.
Some observers see attempts by agencies from rich Western states to influence developing countries’ domestic policies on gender as proof that developing countries remain structurally dependent on powers at the core of the world economy. In dependency theory, widening inequalities between rich and poor countries are seen to result from the workings of a global structural hierarchy. Dominant groups in rich countries are said to define and shape ‘development’ in a way that ensures poor countries remain dependent on them. Today, more than 30 years after the emergence of dependency theory, a number of scholars and activists (including those named below) are drawing on it, either implicitly or explicitly, to critique relations between Western donors and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Arab states. The objectives of this article are to examine the validity of this critique by reviewing opposing views of local–foreign collaboration in campaigns related to women’s status and human rights; to analyze the specific case of how local and international players interacted over the issue of women’s representation in the Egyptian media in the decade from 1993 to 2003; and to relate findings from this examination to current debates about external involvement in local activism.
Arab Media
By Anne Nelson
Carnegie Reporter
Fall 2008
Digital technology is bringing rapid change to Arab nations, from protests to social interactions, and the effects will be felt far beyond regional borders.
Access the article.
Mandatory Testing and News in the Schools: Implications for Civic Education
A Report from the Carnegie-Knight Task Force on the Future of Journalism Education
From America’s earliest days, its public schools have been charged with both educating students and making them into citizens. Some observers believe that civic education in the United States is being compromised by the push for mandatory testing, with its emphasis on language, math, and science skills. Based on a recent national survey of 1,262 social studies, civics, and government teachers, this report examines the effect of mandatory testing on the classroom use of current affairs news. The evidence shows that standardized tests do inhibit classroom use of news, including student discussion. The effect is particularly pronounced in schools with large numbers of lower-income and English-as-a-second-language (ESL) students, who are precisely the students that would benefit most from a vigorous civic education. The report concludes with recommendations on how teachers, school administrators, and policymakers can mitigate the effects of mandatory testing on civic education in America.
