Media to be monitored

THE media will be under the spotlight until after the elections.

The Namibian chapter of the Media Institute of Southern Africa (Misa), the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) and the Pretoria-based Media Tenor South Africa last month started a media monitoring project for the elections. Christiaan Keulder of IPPR told The Namibian that the aim is to “provide an analysis” of how the media are covering the election.The research will look at how the political parties are covered, the type of issues that news organisations report about, which people are quoted the most in articles and what political parties say about each other.”Ours is not to judge the quality of elections, but to reflect on the coverage of the elections …it is more about the quality of the media,” said Keulder.He said people and organisations outside the media will be able to look at the trend and might change their strategy to get better publicity.Media organisations will benefit from the research because they will be able to gauge what their coverage has been concentrating on or missing.The elections media monitoring project, which started at the beginning of September, will run until the end of December.However, a long-term monitoring programme will be carried out in order to provide a broad picture of how the media cover a range of issues in the country.Christiaan Keulder of IPPR told The Namibian that the aim is to “provide an analysis” of how the media are covering the election.The research will look at how the political parties are covered, the type of issues that news organisations report about, which people are quoted the most in articles and what political parties say about each other.”Ours is not to judge the quality of elections, but to reflect on the coverage of the elections …it is more about the quality of the media,” said Keulder.He said people and organisations outside the media will be able to look at the trend and might change their strategy to get better publicity.Media organisations will benefit from the research because they will be able to gauge what their coverage has been concentrating on or missing.The elections media monitoring project, which started at the beginning of September, will run until the end of December.However, a long-term monitoring programme will be carried out in order to provide a broad picture of how the media cover a range of issues in the country.