Resources - Research Reports
Research Reports are indepth, often quantitative reports around our various programme areas.
- Women? What women?! - Media contributes to the disempowerment of women
-
It is clear that issues around gender equality, women’s poverty and health are of primary importance to South Africa. Women form a greater proportion of South Africa’s population and a greater proportion of the rural population (which is also the most poorly serviced), head a greater number of households (which are more likely to be poor and earn less than male-headed households), are affected by HIV/Aids the most, and suffer alarming levels of gender-based violence. MMA’s monitoring demonstrates that this has not been reflected in media’s election coverage, when these issues should come to the forefront of many (if not the greater majority of) reports.
Tweet
- “No big deal” Poverty, Service Delivery and Election Coverage: Election Report for week ending 3 Apr
-
This week MMA looks at key topics of elections stories. The results of the topics of elections coverage present a number of issues to discuss. For this report however, we will build on the prior week’s report “Is the media campaigning for the ANC and COPE?”, and focus on the level of attention devoted to the topics of manifestos, campaigning, poverty and service delivery.
This report addresses the results of media monitoring conducted from 13/03/09 until 01/04/2009. According to the monitoring results, it would appear that media consider simplistic coverage of campaign activities and political conflict to be more important than engaging parties and the public over the content of party manifestos, and how parties believe such major issues as poverty and service delivery should and can be addressed.
Tweet
- Is media campaigning for ANC and COPE?: Election Report for week ending 28 March 2009
-
While it is reasonable to expect the ANC as the ruling party to receive greater attention in news coverage, information that is useful to citizens for enabling informed participation has been few and far between. The coverage has in fact often appeared as an extension of Political Advertisements, and should therefore be far more limited in number and extent. This argument can also be extended to the attention received by other parties, with coverage exhibiting a bias towards the new party Cope at the expense of other more established parties.
Tweet
- Meeting their public mandate?: A Critical Analysis of South African Media Statutory Bodies
-
This book, published by the Open Society Foundation and written by various organisations, offers insignt into the South African Media Statutory Bodies. The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa, the South African Broadcasting Corporation, the Universal Services Agency, and the Media Development and Diversity Agency are explored in terms of their mandates. The Media Monitoring Project conducted the research and wrote the analysis of the SABC.
Placed here with the kind permission of the Open Society Foundation.
Tweet
- Media and the 16 Days Campaign 2006
-
The coverage of The 16 Days Campaign in Gauteng media coverage, including e-tv and SABC 3 prime time news, was reasonable good in most aspects. Some improvements could be made in terms of reporting on woman and child abuse.
Tweet
- Media wise - children make the difference
-
The comprehensive research study proposed by the MMP, the first of its kind in South Africa, aimed to address the representation of children and children’s rights in the news media. The ECM project took place over a three-month period in 2003. A group of monitors reviewed print, radio and television media to identify trends in the portrayal of children in the news. In an exciting and innovative research approach, the MMP also sought the active participation of children, in order to understand their views and perceptions of children’s representation in the media. The MMP, together with Clacherty & Associates, an organisation that specialises in participatory work with children, co-developed the content and methodology of the participatory workshops. Clacherty & Associates facilitated the workshops, which were run with the children. As part of the process, the children engaged in a parallel monitoring project where they monitored the media for a two-week period. This was done so that the children could express their views directly and see for themselves how they are represented by the
Tweet
- The Children’s Media Mentoring Project (CMMP) Report
-
The Media Monitoring Project pioneered a best practice approach to working with children as monitors and with journalists as mentors in a project called the Children’s Media Mentoring Project. MMP worked together with the Institute for the Advancement of Journalism (IAJ) and Agência de Notícas dos Direitos da Infância (ANDI: a Brazilian news agency focused on children’s rights). This report describes the project activities and looks at The Star newspaper as a case study on the effectiveness of the MMP’s approach.
Tweet
- 50 Years of Women’s Voices: Women’s Day 2006
-
The 50th year anniversary of the 1956 women’s pass march offered media an opportunity to educate and inform South African’s of the role played by women in the struggle against apartheid. Diverse women featured in coverage including:
- The stories of heroines, leaders and activists;
- gender-based violence covered
- Successful women; and
- The Magogos
- Shades of Prejudice: An investigation into the SA media’s coverage of racial violence and xenophobia
-
The research undertaken by the Media Monitoring Project (MMP) on behalf of CSVR has revealed that media interest in issues of race and racism did not end with the dismantling of formal institutional apartheid. However, the focus of media discourse on race and racism has shifted to new manifestations of racism, such as racism within political discourse and xenophobia.
Tweet
- Delivering Service: Local Government Elections 2006 and the Media
-
The 2006 Local Government Elections demonstrated many of the patterns from past of election coverage, with the elections attracting much media attention, but event-based reporting predominating. The majority of the coverage was national, rather than local, as may be expected in a local election. Beeld was the exception in this regard.
The fairness of coverage was compromised by media not setting their own agenda, but in allowing national party figures to do so. While national political figures featured largely, local issues only made the news mainly through public service delivery protests.
Women featured during this period in the media as a result of party manifestos to promote women within their ranks, not from a media strategy to seek out and discover female sources.
Race featured narrowly in the media, based on party announcements and perceived race-based voting.
Tweet
Categories
Subscribe
Keep up to date with the latest MMA news and resources, delivered to your email inbox.
