Resources - Research Reports
Research Reports are indepth, often quantitative reports around our various programme areas.
- A Tangled Web: Human Trafficking, Child Protection & the Media
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As a metaphor, a web does nicely to describe human trafficking: a thing with many threads, sticky, dangerous, and unseen by victims. The sticky threads each different yet inseparable, certainly not linear, clean, neat and easily spotted…well unless you’re the spider that is.
What do we know about human trafficking? What should we know about it? What are we being told by the media? What is the media missing?
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- The Best Promoter & Worst Violator of Children’s Rights in SA Print Media (January - March 2011)
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MMA has produced a MAD OAT quarterly report for the first three months of 2011. This report is a qualitative assessment of articles published by mainstream print mediums which, in our view, clearly violated or promoted children’s rights.
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- Children’s Views not in the News; Portrayal of Children in South African Print Media 2010
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MMA has been monitoring and analysing print media’s performance, in terms of how it reports on children, since 2003. This is its fourth report on the topic, and since 2003 the percentage of articles featuring children has doubled.
Author and MMA’s Specialised Children’s Monitoring Project Coordinator Ronell Singh says that “while we are seeing gradual progress being made in how the media reports on children, there is still plenty of room for improvement – look at how few features or in-depth analysis articles deal with children for example – just 4%. It is these longer and more in depth articles that can better explore children’s issues and put them on the agenda, and yet, even since last year, we are seeing children appearing in fewer of these articles instead of more.”
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- Children’s Views not in the News; Portrayal of Children in South African Print Media 2009 -2010
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For this report MMA monitored 13 of South Africa’s major news publications for content on children over a period of nine months (from September 2009 to May 2010. Since 2003 the coverage afforded to children, children’s rights and their issues by the South African media has been steadily growing. According to this report it stands at 11.4%. But there is still significant room for improvement, both in terms of the quantity and quality of reporting on children.
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- Children’s Views Not in the News: Portrayal of Children in South African Print Media 2009
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Monitoring conducted by Media Monitoring Africa (MMA) in 2003 as part of the Empowering Children & the Media (ECM) strategy showed that only 6% of all news included children. The latest data to emerge from the ECM reveals that representation of children has improved, marginally, to 8.4% of all news monitored in 2009. The monitoring shows that not only are children’s issues frequently sidelined, but un-careful and unethical reporting often leads to further violations of their rights.
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- Race and Migration in the Community Media: Local stories, common stereotypes
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In South Africa, racism and xenophobia, widely recognised as human rights violations, are particularly pertinent. A long history of institutionalised racism, most recently apartheid, saw the classification, segregation and discrimination of people along racial lines. It has shaped perceptions, attitudes, identities, and relationships, and left a legacy of inequality. In May 2008, xenophobia came starkly to the public’s attention, in the form of violence targeted at perceived “foreigners”, making local, national and international headlines. However, negative and discriminatory attitudes and behaviour towards migrants, or xenophobia, have long been documented as widespread and problematic in South Africa. Black immigrants in particular are victims of xenophobic attitudes and treatment.
For many South Africans, community and small commercial media are not only important sources of information for communities about issues affecting them, which may include racism and xenophobia, but also about “groups” of people that they may not come into contact with. While research has helped establish how the national and provincial media cover issues of race, racism, migrants and xenophobia, little information is available about coverage by community and small commercial media. To address this need, Media Monitoring Africa conducted research into how issues of race, ethnicity, migrants, racism and xenophobia are represented in community and small commercial newspapers.
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- National and Provincial Elections 2009: “A win or a place, citizens come last.”
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During election time, the media has a pivotal role to play in communicating information to voters and facilitating their making of informed decisions on Election Day. For this reason Media Monitoring Africa (MMA) has been monitoring coverage, gathering data and providing analysis since the first South African national and provincial elections in 1994. This report assesses the results of monitoring coverage preceding and immediately after the fourth national democratic election, which took place on 22 April 2009, and reflects findings from 56 South African print and broadcast media. While considering the media’s mandate for fairness and balance in coverage, the report also considers the quality of the coverage that deals with the issues that materially influence South African citizens’ lives and futures as a fundamental function of the right to free speech and self-determination. Furthermore, this report takes the opportunity to explicitly engage with questions of gender in the context of election coverage. The findings are based on quantitative analysis and a rating system that allows for comparison and ranking of media performance. MMA proposes that while the South African media landscape demonstrated good levels of balance and fairness in its coverage, there is an opportunity to develop greater rigour in dealing with topics of importance to citizens, in order to better inform voters on key election issues.
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- Torture in South Africa: Exploring torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment
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Little information exists on the practice of torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment (CIDT) in postapartheid South Africa. However, despite the dearth of research and information, due to the history and widespread use of torture against political activists, it is not surprising that there is, in some quarters, a stated commitment to the eradication of torture. This is reflected in South Africa’s ratification in 1998 of the UN Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Treatment or Punishment (UNCAT);1 the signing of other international instruments outlawing torture; and the inclusion of the prohibition of torture and CIDT in the Constitution. South Africa has also signed the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (OPCAT).
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- 2009 Election Coverage: Did media assist citizens in making an informed decision?
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In Media Monitoring Africa’s final weekly report on the 2009 Elections, we focus on the overall performance of media in terms of their role in enabling South African citizens to fully and effectively participate in their democracy through the provision of relevant and timely information in the lead up to the elections on April 22.
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- Deadly silence - Media election coverage confirms disinterest in the welfare of children
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With the exception of a handful of articles by some journalists, election coverage highlighting the serious issues faced by South African children has been extremely disappointing for its absence. In the previous weekly report, it was noted that in media’s role of holding government to account and informing citizens, it was particularly important for media to give voice to the concerns and opinions of the marginalised in society, as so often they remain silenced through powerlessness and political disinterest. It is even more important that media fulfil this role during an election period, when the need for information and potential for influence and change is the greatest.
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