Policy briefs, working papers & primers
Policy briefs and working papers on effective media development and donor support to journalism.
This resource page is a work in progress. Please get in touch to let us know what is missing using this form.
Disinformation
Policy briefs and working papers on media development and donor support to journalism in relation to addressing disinformation and information disorder.
This page is regularly updated. If you would like to suggest a resource, please get in touch.
For those advocating against similar laws around the world, this page features some examples of reference papers or examples that can be drawn upon:
Thomson Foundation
Center for Law and Democracy
Center for Law and Democracy
In May 2021, the Centre for Law and Democracy prepared analyses of Mauritania’s ICT Act and proposed amendments to it. CLD also released an analysis of amendments to Myanmar’s Penal Code, which includes some commentary on the new provisions on false news. Both analyses referred to the problem of banning “false news” and referenced international standards in this area.
Fondation Hirondelle
This report from Fondation Hirondelle outlines their approach to disinformation, which “centres on the fundamental principles of journalism and on the lessons learned from over 25 years of applying these principles in highly fragile contexts, where access to reliable information for the majority is not a given, and where rumours, hate speech and propaganda undermine peace building and development.”
It features recommendations for governments and development aid donors; policymakers and institutions; media owners; companies and web and social media organisations.
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights - IRENE KHAN
Summary
In the present report, the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression examines the threats posed by disinformation to human rights, democratic institutions and development processes. While acknowledging the complexities and challenges posed by disinformation in the digital age, the Special Rapporteur finds that the responses by States and companies have been problematic, inadequate and detrimental to human rights. She calls for multidimensional and multi-stakeholder responses that are well grounded in the international human rights framework and urges companies to review their business model and States to recalibrate their responses to disinformation, enhancing the role of free, independent and diverse media, investing in media and digital literacy, empowering individuals and rebuilding public trust.
SUBMISSIONS
UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression Submission to the report on disinformation (Feb 2021) DW Akademie
IMS submits input to UN Special Rapporteur for report on disinformation (Feb. 2021) International Media Support
Submission on an Annual Thematic Report on Disinformation (March 2021) Centre for Law and Democracy
Cyber Secure Policy Exchange - AVIV OVADYA
Search engines transformed the first decade of the millennium. Recommendation engines revolutionized the second decade. Neither in their current form are sufficient for addressing misinformation. They focus on discovery and primarily rely on relevance. But they are not particularly helpful at many other important information tasks, particularly contextualization.
We need better tools to help people quickly contextualize media that they come across online. This is especially important for supporting busy everyday people needing to rapidly make sense of the misinformation-laden text, images, and videos shared in group chats and online platforms.
Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ)
The policy paper is based on polls involving 229 Arab journalists and dialogue with 17 experts from the press, representatives of local and international institutions concerned with training and supporting journalists, as well as representatives of Facebook, Twitter and Google.
The paper comprises three chapters. First, it discusses what fake news is, distinguishing it from other variations of misinformation and refuting common assumptions surrounding it; second, it unpacks the state of fake news in the Arab world during the COVID-19 pandemic, specifically until August 2020; third, it names the most important methods used in the region to confront this news, discussing their effectiveness and shortcomings. Finally, the paper puts forward recommendations to prevent and combat the regional spread of misleading news.
Freedom House - ANASTASIA NANI, LOLITA BUKA & GINA LENTINE
This paper argues that the approach to media policy, including adherence to fundamental media freedoms, is a key factor in determining the overall effectiveness of the country’s pandemic response. The brief compares government policies relating to media during the pandemic, considers how these policies impacted media and the effectiveness of the country’s coronavirus response, and presents actionable recommendations for Moldova and other countries in the region to develop more effective media policy in times of crisis.
Forum on Information and Democracy
In June 2020, the Forum on Information and Democracy launched its inaugural working group. The Forum asks experts, academics and jurists all over the world to define a policy framework (set of recommendations) to respond to the infodemics through four structural challenges.
1 - Meta regulation of content moderation
To evolve from content regulation to meta regulation (regulation of the corporate actors that dictate the moderation rules), we need to develop a set of principles that platforms and social media will have to accept, in accordance with international standards of freedom of opinion and expression.
2 - Platforms’ design and reliability of information
The pandemic has demonstrated the need to reverse the amplification of sensational content and rumour by promoting reliable news and information in a structural manner. Based on established criteria, mechanisms and policies to promote the authenticity, reliability and findability of content are to be determined.
3 - Mixed private and public spaces on private messaging systems
The virality of fake news shared on messaging apps is reinforced by the use of groups that sometimes have thousands of members. It is important to define minimal rules for messaging apps that exploit the possibilities of the online public domain while complying with international standards on freedom of opinion and expression.
4 - Transparency of digital platforms
Access to the qualitative and quantitative data of the leading digital platforms and access to their algorithms is a prerequisite for evaluating them. Transparency requirements must therefore be imposed on the platforms in order to be able to determine whether they are respecting their responsibilities in the aforementioned areas and, in general, with regard to their business models and algorithmic choices.
As false or manipulated information continues to proliferate online during the Covid-19 epidemic, the Forum on Information and Democracy is publishing a report entitled How to end infodemics. Based on more than 100 contributions from international experts, it offers 250 recommendations on how to rein in a phenomenon that threatens democracies and human rights, including the right to health.
Launched in 2019 by 11 non-governmental organizations and research centres, the Forum on Information and Democracy created a working group on infodemics in June to devise a “regulatory framework” to respond to the information chaos on online platforms and social media. After five months of work, this group, whose steering committee is co-chaired by Maria Ressa and Marietje Schaake, is publishing a detailed report with 250 recommendations for governments and digital platforms.
The twelve main recommendations of the working group
Public regulation is needed to impose transparency requirements on online service providers.
1. Transparency requirements should relate to all platforms’ core functions in the public information ecosystem: content moderation, content ranking, content targeting, and social influence building. 2. Regulators in charge of enforcing transparency requirements should have strong democratic oversight and audit processes. 3. Sanctions for non-compliance could include large fines, mandatory publicity in the form of banners, liability of the CEO, and administrative sanctions such as closing access to a country’s market.
A new model of meta-regulation with regards to content moderation is required.
4. Platforms should follow a set of Human Rights Principles for Content Moderation based on international human rights law: legality, necessity and proportionality, legitimacy, equality and non discrimination. 5. Platforms should assume the same kinds of obligation in terms of pluralism that broadcasters have in the different jurisdictions where they operate. An example would be the voluntary fairness doctrine. 6. Platforms should expand the number of moderators and spend a minimal percentage of their income to improve quality of content review, and particularly, in at-risk countries.
New approaches to the design of platforms have to be initiated.
7. Safety and quality standards of digital architecture and software engineering should be enforced by a Digital Standards Enforcement Agency. The Forum on Information and Democracy could launch a feasibility study on how such an agency would operate. 8. Conflicts of interests of platforms should be prohibited, in order to avoid the information and communication space being governed or influenced by commercial, political or any other interests. 9. A co-regulatory framework for the promotion of public interest journalistic contents should be defined, based on self-regulatory standards such as the Journalism Trust Initiative; friction to slow down the spread of potentially harmful viral content should be added.
Safeguards should be established in closed messaging services when they enter into a public space logic.
10. Measures that limit the virality of misleading content should be implemented through limitations of some functionalities; opt-in features to receive group messages, and measures to combat bulk messaging and automated behavior. 11. Online service providers should be required to better inform users regarding the origin of the messages they receive, especially by labelling those which have been forwarded. 12. Notification mechanisms of illegal content by users, and appeal mechanisms for users that were banned from services should be reinforced.
Gender Equality
Policy briefs, working papers and primers on the gender equality within media development.
PRIMED: Gender learning brief (October, 2022)
Protecting Independent Media for Effective Development (PRIMED)
This learning brief aims to summarise key issues, evidence and trends on media and gender and help PRIMED partners identify opportunities to empower women as both media consumers and content producers as well as to amplify the voices of women in the media. It explores the links between improved gender equality in the workplace and the sustainability and viability of the media (a business case of gender equality). The brief also considers content formats which can promote gender equality in the public sphere and examines the role of self-regulation in ensuring that women are more fairly represented in media outputs.
Main takeaways
Key Challenges:
Women are poorly represented in media content
Media perpetuate stereotypes
Women lack access to information : the digital gender divide
Women are under-represented in the media sector
Solutions:
"There should be enough women at the entry and middle levels of a company to select from and promote in order for there to be parity at the most senior, decision-making levels."
The role of media in changing gender norms: "Media can share a wider variety of roles and behaviours pertaining to different sexes."
Business and management models can change gender equality: "Increased gender diversity appears to have a positive effect on financial performance, talent retention, innovation, reputation, team performance and motivation."
Successful strategies to increase gender equality in the workplace: "a better diversity climate and an inclusive leadership style can reduce turnover, increase employee satisfaction and engagements, and improve the performance of diverse teams."
MediaDev effectiveness
Policy briefs, working papers and primers on the effectiveness of development and media development.
This page is regularly updated. If you would like to suggest a resource, please get in touch.
GFMD IMPACT Policy Briefing
In the context of the process to "Renew the principles for effective media assistance" GFMD IMPACT analysed the scope and focus of media assistance coordination efforts (in Lebanon, Syria, Ukraine and in a few other cases), highlighting common pitfalls as well as best practice.The report presents a set of recommendations for practical steps that could be used to orchestrate future coordination initiatives, including in conflict and emergency situations.
The full report (40 pages)
For more information contact the GFMD IMPACT help desk.
OECD policy paper
Domestic Accountability and Support to Media: From the Why to the How in Effective Cooperation Paper prepared for OECD DAC GovNet Meeting January 28, 2014
For the Joint WBI/Internews/BBC World Service Trust/OECD-DAC-GOVNET Seminar on Trends in Accountability: Media Assistance Today, 7-8 June 2011
DAC Network on Governance - OECD
Busan Pertnership for Effective Development Cooperation
HLF4 - which took place in Busan, Korea from 29 November to 1 December 2011 - aimed both to evaluate progress already made towards achieving more effective aid, and to define an agenda for the future. The international socio-economic climate has changed greatly since the Paris Declaration for Aid Effectiveness was endorsed in 2005: the economic crisis, the increasingly prominent role played by emerging economies, and the diversification of development co operation flows all mean that focus needed to be widened.
International co-operation can no longer be understood as simply a relationship between “rich” and “poor” governments, but rather it is a complex network that includes middle-income countries that are both donors and recipients (South-South co- operation), multilateral organisations, international financial institutions, and non-governmental bodies such as the private sector and civil society organisations.
International development needs to open up to the wider development context; one that also takes into consideration the role of the private sector, the fight against corruption, preventing tax evasion. In these areas countries most in need suffer considerable losses of their domestic resources.
After a lengthy and highly participatory negotiation process, the HLF4 concluded with the endorsement of the “Busan Partnership for Effective Development Co- operation” by over 160 countries and around 50 other organisations.
United Nations Development Program (UNDP)
The UNDG has prepared one joint United Nations Paris Declaration Survey response, which allows continuity with previous years and is consistent with the spirit of the United Nations reform agenda and system-wide coherence. In 2011, in addition to a complementary UNDG report on implementing the Paris Declaration, UNDP and several other UNDG members have also been preparing individual agency reports, which globally consoli- date the 2010 results reported by agencies at country level. Given that no disaggregated data is available on UNDP performance in 2005 or 2007, there is no baseline on the basis of which UNDP could establish relative targets. While it is therefore not possible to measure progress between 2005 and 2010, the existing disaggre- gated figures on UNDP’s performance nevertheless provide a useful indication of how UNDP is faring in 2010.
With the exception of using country systems where further progress is needed, UNDP is faring well overall in reaching the 2010 Paris Declaration targets on effective aid. Slow progress on UNDP’s use of country systems mirrors the slow progress of most donors in increasing the use of country systems. Equally, UNDP’s implementa- tion of a number of Paris Declaration principles, like use of country systems and direct budget support, hinges on the decisions of its Executive Board, particularly those relating to internal rules and procedures, transparency and disclosure policy. On the other hand, UNDP has made great strides toward aligning aid flows with national priorities and improving the predictability of its assistance. While further efforts on harmonizing its support are needed, ongoing improvements to United Nations and UNDP programming and system-wide coherence are apparently already facilitating improvements in this area.
Sustainability & viability
Policy briefs and working papers on sustainability and viability of journalism and media.
This resource page is a work in progress. Please get in touch to let us know what is missing using this form.
Produced for GFMD IMPACT by Macroscope’s Sameer Padania and Francesca Silvani.
A National Fund for Journalism (NFJ) is a dedicated structure that is designed with a strategic sectoral purpose to provide long-term funding to an independent journalism ecosystem in a particular country, region or place. It can take different forms, but in essence is designed to redress shortcomings, barriers or imbalances in a particular media market, or to incentivise, catalyse or accelerate new entrants or transformative processes in that market.
Konrad-Adenauer Stiftung
In this report, the Konrad-Adenauer Stiftung underscores the importance of supporting local media organisations in ways adapted to the particular socioeconomic and political contexts in sub-Saharan African countries. The report enumerates the following policy recommendations to promote the long-term sustainability of local media:
The development of an enabling environment, including legal and regulatory measures and the provision of back-end support in areas such as research, training and others.
Strengthening funding mechanisms, including:
indirect subsidy such as tax relief and the zero-rating of news websites;
direct public funding, as exists for media in several countries;
the fair use of government advertising, often a major factor in media economies in the Global South;
commercial income and ways to support the access of local and community media to advertising markets;
responding to the power of digital platforms, who need to make a fair contribution to local information ecosystems;
improved co-ordination among international donor agencies in order to deliver greater impact, including support for the new International Fund for Public Interest Media; and
the development of new business models that draw on diverse sources of income, with particular focus on direct audience support.
BBC Media Action, PRIMED- HARON MWANGI
This paper focuses on government and media initiatives that address the viability challenges in Kenya. It explores the instances and circumstances under which the media community in the country has worked closely with the government to implement media reforms through new legislation and related policies.
DR. JULIE POSETTI, DR. ANYA SCHIFFRIN, EMILY BELL, FRANCESCA EDGERTON - UNESCO
The reality is that, even before the current viability crisis, there were too few news outlets to serve audiences across the range of languages, localities and communities. Many countries have lacked an inclusive professional journalism system that serves diverse audiences and covers stories of, and for, marginalised communities and people living in poverty. Efforts to support the production of public interest journalism should therefore be framed in a wider perspective of reinvigorating media development more broadly.
Global Alliance for Responsible Media
The GARM has developed and will adopt common definitions to ensure that the advertising industry is categorizing harmful content in the same way across the board. These eleven key categories have been identified in consultation with experts from GARM’s NGO Consultative Group. Establishing these standards is the essential foundation needed to stop harmful content from being monetised through advertising. Individual GARM members will adopt these shared principles in their operations, whether they are a marketer, agency, or media platform.
We fundamentally believe that, together, these definitions are the cornerstone for us to find balance between supporting responsible speech, bolstering public safety, and providing for responsible marketing practices. With this framework of consistent categories in place, we will be able to improve transparency in the availability, monetization, and inclusion of content within advertising campaigns. This is essential to help platforms, agencies, and advertisers make decisions essential to the advertising industry.
In November 2019, the GARM initiated work towards this challenge under a working group focused on advancing shared language and standards for advertising & media (as seen in our GARM Charter here). The output of this work is the following:
A common understanding of what harmful and sensitive content is via content categories
A common understanding of where ads should not appear, as expressed in a Brand Safety Floor
A common way of delineating different risk levels for sensitive content, as expressed in a Brand Suitability
Framework
DW Akademie
This paper concludes that investing in safety and security measures not only saves lives but also strengthens the business models of media outlets.
Media managers and editors such as Maria Ressa of Rappler (Philippines), Jade Ramírez from Periodistas de a Pie (Mexico), Roula Mikhael from the Maharat Foundation (Lebanon) and Jean-Baptiste Sawadogo from the Community Radio Radio Vénégré (Burkina Faso) share how investing in safety and security measures not only saves lives but also strengthens the business models of media outlets.
They see clear links between media viability aspects such as quality journalism, audience engagement, collaborations, and capacity building on the one hand and physical, psychological and digital security as well as secure working conditions on the other.
To put their experiences into a wider context, the publication also contains articles from the ACOS Alliance, IWMF and digital security expert Daniel Moßbrucker.
BBC Media Action - JAMES DEANE
In the first working paper in a series from our project Protecting Independent Media for Effective Development (PRIMED), author James Deane assesses whether fresh approaches to public subsidy might help support independent media in low- and middle-income settings.
Consortium to Promote Human Rights, Civic Freedoms and Media Development (CHARM) Africa & Fojo Media Institute
This policy brief seeks to
Critically explore the concept of sustainable journalism.
Define what the concept could entail in a sub-Saharan context and investigate the implications for media development.
"The approach should be of interest to everyone who has an interest in the health of journalism. That would include individual practitioners, publishers, regulators, governments and others. We feel that it should particularly be taken into account by the media development community. We believe that the development of intervention and support strategies and plans can profit from using the notion of sustainability as a unifying principle."
Government of Canada - MIRA MILOSEVIC (GFMD)
"In only two decades, changes in the political, technological, social, and business environment have compromised sustainability and, thus, the independence of journalism and news media globally. With the COVID-19 pandemic amplifying the crisis, the coming years will be decisive for the future of journalism."
... by donors & funders
This page will feature policy briefs & working papers published by donors & funders of media development and journalism support.
This resource page is a work in progress. Please get in touch to let us know what is missing using this form.
Swiss Development Cooperation
Uncomfortable truths for development practitioners
Development researchers and practitioners alike have argued that it is more productive to seek out what works, rather than what is broken. To do this, they have increasingly looked outside the formal boundaries of the state. There have been local turns, both in peacebuilding and in development practice (Mac Ginty and Richmond 2013; Luckham 2017). These have attracted programme support for a range of grass-roots initiatives, such as decentralisation programmes, local level courts and policing, women’s peacebuilding activities, and many others.
A key problem for all of these initiatives, however, is that they easily become hostage to wider national predicaments, such as escalating armed conflict; interacting state and non-state violence; the breakdown of social protections; inertia or corruption in government; and ill-thought-out interventions by regional and international actors.
Hence donor agencies must still find better ways of working in, around, and on fragile and authoritarian states. They cannot begin to do so unless they have a more realistic grasp of (a) how these states work; (b) for whom they work; and (c) whom they fail. This may mean facing up to some uncomfortable truths. Not all autocracies are fragile; and some may even be better at ensuring order and delivering public goods than defective democracies. Democracies as well as autocracies may protect vast inequalities in power and wealth, and can sometimes be venal, corrupt, and fragile. Democratisation itself may tip countries into cycles of violence and long-term disorder, and we do not know enough about why this happens or how to reverse these cycles. Even well-consolidated democracies sometimes govern their marginalised peripheries in comparably violent and exclusionary ways to autocracies.
In development-land as well as in peace-land, there is little room for political innocence (Autesserre 2014). Practitioners should be politically informed and capable of critical self-reflection. They should consider and be prepared for:
How to cope with intransigent or self-interested policymakers when negotiating access or supporting development programmes;
How to identify reliable interlocutors within national governments, without rendering them vulnerable to intimidation and other forms of regime pressure;
How to re-channel assistance and programming from problematic governments to NGOs and civic organisations;
What to do when intelligence or national security agencies try to co-opt or subvert the latter;
and If cooperation is required with dissidents or even armed insurgents, as well as with the regime, how to navigate a way between them. The dilemmas are many, and there are few general answers.
Working on authoritarian structures and fragile situations to change them is especially challenging. Governance initiatives supported by development agencies cannot but be politically loaded. They all too easily result in external actors taking on tasks that national governments and others should be performing. National elites may be more interested in the resources that programmes bring in, than in the outcomes they are supposed to achieve. International engagement, especially in governance and security matters, disturbs existing power balances, and is supported or opposed accordingly. Added to this is donor hubris, including the tendency to overestimate what such forms of support can actually achieve in extremely volatile situations.
Conclusion
In sum, there needs to be less emphasis on good practice norms and policy templates, and more on well-informed realism about what can be achieved within the political constraints and dynamics of each local, national, and regional situation.
Swiss Development Cooperation
Key points
Authoritarian developmental states work well only under strict historical and institutional conditions. They are not a panacea for economic catch-up.
Learning from democratic systems (institutional mimicking) is vital in understanding resilient authoritarian regimes.
Effective control of capital, labour, and local governments is a complex task that will fail in most state-led developmental ambitions.
Authoritarian states often face huge challenges when they reach mid-income status, as societies become diversified.
The resilience of authoritarian regimes depends on how they resolve development challenges, not on adopting specific development models.
Information technology is likely to further polarise authoritarian regimes between those who can or cannot access data for economic and political control.
Disinformation Primer (Feb 2021) - USAID
“This primer presents an overview of disinformation culture to give readers a sense of key concepts, terminology, select case studies, and programmatic design options. Disinformation is by no means new. Although social media platforms have emerged as the most efficient spreaders of false information, disinformation is also spread through analog media such as radio, television, and newspapers. It is, however, the combination of traditional analog media, in concert with new digital technologies, that allows information to spread faster and more broadly (even across borders) in unprecedented ways. Experts have described this phenomenon as “information disorder,” a condition in which truth and facts coexist in a milieu of misinformation and disinformation—conspiracy theories, lies, propaganda, and half-truths. They have labeled its ability to undermine democracy and individual autonomy “a wicked problem,” i.e., a problem that is difficult and complex, such as poverty or climate change. Despite the immensity of the challenge, there are promising ways that journalists, civil society organizations, technology specialists, and governments are finding to prevent and counter misinformation and disinformation. This primer presents several programmatic ideas to consider for standalone or integrative approaches as part of democracy and governance-related programming.”
+ how to produce a policy brief
Guides on how to produce policy briefs, working papers & primers.
Research to Action - SUE MARTIN
Policy briefs are useful influencing tools for think tanks and research institutions. Along with other short items, such as blogs and newspaper articles, they may be the only items from your organisation that busy policymakers will read.
This quick guide, developed as part of the Think Tank Initiative’s Policy Engagement and Communications Program, is aimed at researchers and communications staff who are planning policy briefs for the first time, or want to review their approach. It sets out a tried and tested approach and suggested structure for policy briefs.