Tea Cup Diaries recording of customers at tea shop in Myanmar

Tea Cup Diaries recording wedding of the character Aye Aye.

The pandemic has unleashed a global wave of government spending, much of it disbursed quickly, at scale and under difficult circumstances. With it have come concerns over fresh opportunities for corruption.

While much international effort has been dedicated to tackling corruption in recent years, little of it appears to have paid off. Transparency International concluded in their most recent global that “most countries have made little or no progress in tackling corruption in almost a decade”. 

This lack of progress prompted a rare Special Session of the UN General Assembly last week, the climax of multiple similar regional and other preparatory meetings. Its main outcome was this long .

As a media specialist, I confess consistent bafflement about much of the anti-corruption debate. I believe independent journalism is really effective in deterring corruption, and I often look to see if support for it is prioritised in anti-corruption efforts. When it isn’t – which is almost always – I wonder on what basis decisions are being made and strategies prioritised. The logic increasingly escapes me.

Almost every evidence review or research paper I read concludes that very few anti-corruption strategies appear to work. Professor Heather Marquette concludes in this just published Westminster Foundation for Democracy paper, : “We also, frankly, don’t know if anti-corruption interventions succeed or fail because we don’t have accurate measures to work with.”

Curtailing media = rising corruption

That finding is consistent with multiple earlier evidence reviews. This 2015 from the UK Department for International Development concluded that “direct anti-corruption interventions, which were especially prominent during the 1990s and 2000s, including efforts such as anti-corruption authorities, national anti-corruption strategies, and national anti-corruption legislation… were found to be ineffective in combating corruption”. In contrast, it found that the evidence available “consistently indicates [that] freedom of the press can reduce corruption and that the media plays a role in the effectiveness of other social accountability mechanisms.” The same paper concluded that when media freedom is curtailed, corruption tends to rise, finding evidence of “restrictions to press freedom leading to higher levels of corruption in a sample of 51 developed and developing countries”.

On a purely evidential assessment, it would seem that investing in support to independent media should be among the central planks of any anti-corruption strategy. Prioritising media support would also help solve the challenges that Marquette highlights of measuring the impact of anti-corruption initiatives. Let’s take just three categories of measurement.

One is correlation between the existence of a free press and reduced rates of corruption (and indeed the absence of a free press and increased rates of corruption). As well as constituting a central plank of democratic theory for centuries, evidence reviews, such as that cited above, conclude this correlation has shown to be strong.

The second is the volume of public assets returned to the public purse as result of investigative or other forms of journalism. The Organised Crime and Reporting Project (OCCRP)  that more than US$7 billion in fines and assets have been seized as a result of its investigations and those of its partners. That seems a pretty convincing measure.

The playbook of 'wannabe' dictators

The third is to assess where those intent on corruption – especially authoritarian leaders – focus their political and financial efforts in order to act with impunity. As this famous 2004 from Stanford University proved, neutralising independent media is top of the list. And as the concluded this year, “The playbook of ‘wannabe’ dictators seems to have been shared widely among leaders in (former) democracies. First, seek to restrict and control the media while curbing academia and civil society. Then couple these with disrespect for political opponents to feed polarisation while using the machinery of the government to spread disinformation. Only when you have come far enough on these fronts is it time for an attack on democracy’s core: elections and other formal institutions.”  

If media wasn’t effective as a check on corruption, those who plan to be corrupt would not focus so much attention on neutralising it.

These are familiar arguments – that the role of, and support for, media is under-prioritised in anti-corruption discussions - which people like me have been making for years. Those arguments have had scant impact and last week’s UNGASS statement was only partially encouraging. The statement “notes with appreciation the important role of civil society, academia, the private sector and the media in identifying, detecting and reporting on cases of corruption”. It commits to “respect, promote and protect the freedom to seek, receive, disseminate and publish information concerning corruption, and ensure that the public has effective access to information, in accordance with the domestic laws of States.” And importantly, it strives “to provide a safe and adequate environment to journalists, and we will investigate, prosecute and punish threats and acts of violence, falling within our jurisdiction, committed against them.” 

But, like almost all anti-corruption discussions, it assumes that one of society’s most important capacities to deter and expose corruption – an independent media – requires no active support. It does nothing to ensure the future viability of the independent media sector. 

Single most important anti-corruption measure

Unfortunately for democracy and development, and for efforts to combat corruption, independent media are disappearing. The mainly advertising-based business model that has sustained independent media has eroded as advertising migrates to online platforms. The pandemic, and the associated characterised by huge volumes of disinformation (itself often deployed from governments and others to ensure impunity against corruption), have both highlighted how important independent journalism is in a crisis whilst dealing a further, sometimes fatal hammer blow to the finances of independent media. The pandemic has been to have cost newspapers more than US$30 billion in lost revenue. The UN Secretary General himself three weeks ago gave his to efforts to create a new .  “We cannot afford to let the pandemic to lead to a media extinction event,” he said. 

The single most important anti-corruption strategy a society can have is a free, independent, sustainable and pluralistic media sector. That, I’d argue, is a justifiable conclusion from the evidence base of what works and doesn’t. It is time to start supporting independent media.

One section of the UNGASS declaration might provide a platform from which to prioritise media support. It concerns the use of confiscated assets illegally acquired through corruption. The language is tortuous and highly provisional, but it urges consideration of “the Sustainable Development Goals in the use of returned assets” and “reinvesting funds for special purposes”.

The reinvestment of confiscated assets to support independent media, and especially investigative journalism, is an argument that organisations like have been making for years, and an investigative journalism fund has been built into the design of the International Fund for Public Interest Media. 

Anti-corruption strategies need to start factoring in that a failure to support independent media will hamper future anti-corruption efforts and prospects. And the weakening of what media remain will provide huge new opportunities for corruption. Those intent on corruption, who have often been most determined to attack, intimidate or co-opt independent journalism that threatens to expose them, can then look forward to sleeping more easily in their feather beds. 

James Deane is Head of Policy for Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Media Action, co-founder of the  and consultant to on the Fund.

At Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Media Action we are dedicated to the cause of media freedom – the principle that expression and communication through media is a right that should be exercised freely -which is at the very core of effective democracies and inclusive societies. This freedom can never be taken for granted, and cannot be exercised in many places around the world.

This World Press Freedom Day commemorates another dark year, with precipitous plunges in rankings on media freedom indices and increasing – and increasingly egregious – attacks on journalists, most notably the killing of Jamal Khashoggi.

Independent, sustainable public interest media are increasingly threatened, not just by laws and politics, but also by economics and the sheer pace of technological change. Each day, we see media co-opted by the powerful, and challenged to secure income that comes without strings attached, especially as more and more advertising revenue becomes concentrated in the pockets of those with a powerful hold over online eyeballs and clicks.

This crisis faced by public interest media, particularly in resource poor settings, is so great that we at Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Media Action are working hard to apply fresh thinking, advance new strategies and mobilise substantial new resources to address it.

Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Journalist, Hassan Arouni, interviewing members of the community in Sierra Leone

Community voices in Iraq- Al Mirbad

Mentoring programme in Zambia

Haba na Haba community discussion

National elections are always a fascinating experience when working for Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Media Action. Frequently played out in fragile governance contexts, national elections are generally viewed as a key milestone in the democratic progress of a country.

For the recent elections in Sierra Leone, rapidly increasing levels of access to social media – particularly among young people – had created an important and influential space for political discussion. In 2009, around 2% of people had internet access nationally. By 2016, 16% of people aged 15-30 nationally had access to the internet, rising to 48% in urban areas, with the vast majority using Facebook and WhatsApp on a smartphone.

Irresponsible media content not only has the potential to distort or misinform voters; at worst, it can be used to incite political violence through hate speech. This threat was taken seriously by the government of Sierra Leone in the run up to the election. At one stage in 2017, the Information Minister stated on national radio that the government might ‘close down social media’ if they perceived it to pose a credible threat to national security. As in so many political contexts, security concerns over ‘fake news’ seemed to be threatening the most basic of democratic freedoms: the rights of access to information and freedom of expression.

Finding a balance between national security and personal freedom – particularly on social media – is something that governments and societies continue to struggle with. The development of social media represents a steep learning curve for many in Sierra Leone, where education remains an issue and where inappropriate content and misinformation can spread alarmingly quickly (as evidenced during the 2017 mudslide and 2014/15 Ebola crisis).

One thing could be said of social media spaces during the 2018 election: they were going to be busy. Whether this would be busy-good or busy-bad remained to be seen. Managing , the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Media Action office in Freetown was in a strong position to reach its 500,000 followers, and beyond, with trusted and independent media content.

Data from a 2016 national audience survey, as well as from analysis of our own social media metrics, helped to provide a unique set of insights into online audiences in Sierra Leone. The team in Freetown decided early on during the project design that we would not have the resources to directly fact-check or counter fake news reports ourselves. Instead we decided to help both audiences and practitioners increase what the wider Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ is calling ‘media literacy’ – the ability to better identify misinformation and therefore more effectively navigate social media spaces.

As part of UNDP’s conflict mitigation programme, and with funding from UK Aid, we developed a programme of activities designed to increase responsible use of social media during the elections. We did two things with this support. Firstly, we designed and delivered a series of in-depth training sessions on responsible use of social media to three key groups: journalists, election management bodies, and young people who are active on social media. Secondly, we produced a range of media content (films and graphics) to inform wider audiences about more responsible use of social media.

Research findings showed that the training was effective in increasing knowledge around responsible use of social media. Following their training, there was a 25% increase in the number of participants who agreed with the statement ‘I can identify untrue news stories or fake news’. The ‘zebra crossing technique’, , was especially helpful in reminding participants to cross-check and verify information and the source of stories before sharing them.

We produced a wide range of content for broadcast on our Sierra Leone Facebook page. These posts attempted to explain how to identify fake news and misinformation, inform followers of the legal implications of sharing other people’s posts, and share tips about online safety. For all our posts about the responsible use of social media during the elections period, the average ‘reach’ was 43,500 people per post. This was measured through our Facebook page metrics and doesn’t capture the additional reach achieved through individuals choosing to share our content on other platforms such as WhatsApp.

When the election went to a second-round run-off, political tensions increased and the rhetoric from politicians started to exploit religious and tribal differences. This was also evident in inappropriate and offensive user-generated content circulating on social media platforms at the time. Yet it seems that this did not result in political violence, as many feared it might. The people of Sierra Leone remained calm, turned out to vote, and managed a largely peaceful transition of power. Whilst it’s not possible to directly attribute our work to this achievement, we believe that an increase in media literacy among Sierra Leoneans online made a valuable contribution to building social resilience to misinformation.

George Ferguson is Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Media Action's Country Director in Sierra Leone 

The UK Department for International Development’s commitment to undertake a “transparency revolution” is welcome. Their new strategy outlined yesterday  sets out a fresh set of commitments to close loopholes that allow corruption to be hidden; support efforts to make DFID’s partner governments more open and transparent, and scale up DFID’s broader support for transparency and accountability efforts.

The opening paragraph of the Secretary of State, Penny Mordaunt’s introduction, closely reflects Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Media Action’s strategic mission in stressing that access to information is critical to enabling people to “have a say in decisions which affect our lives”. The commitment to “scale up support for a healthy, free media and civil society that can champion anti-corruption and transparency and promote debate and uptake of data” is especially welcome.

For the strategy to be effective, however, those of us working in development could learn from some of the mistakes of the past. Three points in particular stand out.

1. Access to information is not enough. For many years, it was assumed that opening up government data and other information would automatically improve transparency and herald a new era in which citizens would shine a light on poor government performance or inadequate service delivery.  and, indeed, for some time, . The data generated as a result of  have provided immense energy and focus to transparency efforts - but translating that data into forms that are easily usable by those who most need the transparency and accountability agenda to work for them continues to be a struggle.

To its credit, DFID’s strategy acknowledges this. “Too often, data is not presented in an understandable way that enables citizens to find, interpret and use it”, it argues. “Evidence must also be accessible to parliaments, audit offices, media and civil society organisations that can monitor and champion improvements in services.” But in many places media that can “monitor and champion” struggles to exist. Media needs support to develop the skills, systems and mindset to do this and to survive long term. We are witnessing a global assault on independent media especially in . The closing of civic space by often authoritarian government is reinforced by increasing attempts to co-opt and capture independent media by multiple commercial, factional, religious, ethnic and other political interests. Independent media, especially in fragile states with weak economies, are simply not able to afford to able to resist such co-option.

It was a neat coincidence that saw this strategy launched on the same day that the UK Prime Minister, Theresa May, gave a speech stressing just how critical journalism is as a “huge force for good” in fostering informed public debate in society. The Prime Minister especially highlighted how “in recent years - especially in local journalism - we've seen falling circulations, a hollowing-out of local newsrooms, and fears for the future sustainability of high quality journalism”. That is indeed the case in the UK.

The consequences in fragile states of weak media systems are more profound, and the challenges of enabling the independence and sustainability of good journalism acutely difficult. When you add to these challenges the increasingly successful exploitation of online platforms to misinform, polarise public debate and undermine the democratic processes, the prospects for seeing open government being translated into more accountable and transparent governance seem still more distant. It is becoming critical that development agencies reconsider and reprioritise their support to independent media.

2. DFID’s strategy makes another welcome proposal in its commitment to test “innovative approaches” in four African countries where it will support efforts to “work with civil society, law enforcement and investigative journalists to use greater transparency, to help drive forward investigations and prosecutions of incidences of corruption.” The potential benefit of supporting investigative journalism is undeniable. The Global Investigative Journalism Network has argued that the revelations exposed in the Panama Papers and other investigative efforts constitute one of the . But, as we have argued before, – the day to day job of journalists reporting on what government is doing, asking challenging questions which demand answers and working to underpin informed public debate. Investigative journalism needs to be complemented by support to independent media systems that are fundamental to the kinds of democratic politics that deliver for those who most need it.

3. Which raises the final challenge of linking transparency initiatives to all in society, and especially those who most need a say in the decisions that affect their lives. Our work at Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Media Action, as well as mentoring many journalists and building the capacities of hundreds of media institutions, focuses on ensuring that those with least access to decision-making power have the opportunity to challenge and question their political leaders. Through the much-valued support of DFID, broadcast public debates and other programmes . They reached almost 200 million people across 14 fragile states; from an earthquake-devastated Kathmandu slum to the presidential palace in Afghanistan, to a disaster-affected Bangladeshi city to an Ebola-affected Sierra Leone.

The evidence that an independent media is essential to improving transparency and accountability is . The damage to effective governance of not having an independent media

DFID’s strategy is welcome and important. Ultimately the future success of transparency and accountability efforts will depend on a more ambitious, more sustained and more determined international support effort to an increasingly imperilled independent media around the world. The UK has a set of media support institutions that have strong reputations and unrivalled capacities to contribute to such efforts. Our hope is that this strategy is just the start of a stronger cross-government commitment to support an increasingly vital but imperilled sector.

James Deane is Director of Policy and Research and Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Media Action.

In the not-for-profit sector we’ve already learned a lot from marketing techniques developed in the commercial world.

The best known example is probably the use of  in response to the HIV epidemic. Another technique, audience segmentation (the process of dividing people into groups based on their similarities – or their differences), can help us target the groups we seek to support. Just like a savvy business-person seeking to maximise their return on investment by ; development organisations can tailor their projects to achieve the greatest positive impact.

Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Media Action is not in the business of making money. But we are most certainly in the business of reaching people with content that both benefits and resonates with them.

This relies on a keen understanding of our target audience – what interests them; who do they trust; what are their priorities in life; what are their preferred means of communication? It goes beyond simple demographics (like age, gender, and income), which, while useful, are really only the beginning of understanding people and what might interest them.

Avoid "buying blind"

Imagine you were tasked with buying a birthday present for someone’s mother and all you know is that she’s a 64 year old woman. What would you buy her, and how likely is it that it will really hit the mark?

Similarly, what if you were designing a project to engage people more in governance? Everyone’s experience of politics, and perception of how they should influence the way their community or country is governed, is different. While this may relate to a person’s age, where they live, or their socio-economic status, these demographic factors do not give us the depth of understanding we need.

We need to understand their perceptions: how much they feel they know about politics and current affairs and how confident they are to engage in politics, as well as whether they are politically active, are part of politically motivated groups, or if they even discuss politics with others. We segmented our audience to do just this.

What our segments tell us

We used data from seven nationally representative surveys across Asia and Africa to identify homogenous sub-groups (in other words, groups of people who share similar characteristics and behaviours), based on their engagement in politics. We then explored correlations between the resulting clusters and various socio-demographic and media consumption characteristics, and triangulated this with qualitative data, to deepen our understanding of each group and develop more ‘tangible’ profiles (or descriptions).

So what did this process reveal about political engagement in the seven countries we explored, and how will we use it? 

We identified and developed five discrete segments across a spectrum of political engagement which ranged from people who are completely ‘detached’ from politics, right through to those who are avidly and actively engaged in political life.

A snapshot of how we segmented our audience

Given the troubling global backdrop, arguably needed a name change in 2017. Marked annually by a gathering organised by , this year’s ‘celebration’ in Jakarta may not have been particularly joyous, but it was certainly more important than ever.

Reflecting on the conversations and debates held in Indonesia, I’ve arrived at three reasons to be worried and three grounds for optimism. I’ll start off gloomy and end on a more upbeat note.

1. There’s been an extraordinary and horrifying leap in the number of journalists imprisoned, attacked or killed. This trend is driven by once democratic or democratising regimes turning increasingly authoritarian and is well documented in the published to coincide with the Day. 

2. The global norm that media freedom should be protected is eroding. Its not-so-gradual deterioration is driven by the rising influence of non-democratic regimes, as well as decreasing willingness in the West –  – to stand up for press freedom, whether at home or abroad. These trends appear to be giving great succour to authoritarians, both established and emergent, to lock up or otherwise clamp down on those who publish inconvenient content. 

3. Brewing concerns over misinformation, disinformation, echo chambers, filter bubbles, hate content and extremism have reached a boiling point. Long bubbling under the surface, these . 

This is not the future the digital evangelists promised. Hope – that we’d live in a digitally connected global society, populated with better informed, more empowered citizens, all working together to overthrow authoritarians and peacefully negotiate their differences, living harmoniously in more democratic, accountable and peaceful polities – has decisively faded. 

Picking up the pieces of this failed vision, tech giants at the conference (who to their credit engaged actively and prominently) focused on how to rebuild trust, combat misinformation and inoculate their networks from the growing hate and extremism infecting them.

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Yet amidst all this darkness, there were some glimmers of light:

1. Sheer courage and extraordinary journalism continue to be seen around the world in increasingly hostile and dangerous conditions. The profession is rediscovering its confidence and relevance in uncovering the , leading citizens to appreciate it more.

2. Despair isn’t universal. The conference was hosted – a better term would be championed – by the Indonesian government. The world’s fourth most populous country and largest Muslim nation is an increasingly international champion of democracy, freedom and tolerance.

is far from pristine. But the country’s enthusiastic hosting of this conference (organised by the ) reminds us that media freedom isn’t simply a Western concept.

Indeed, World Press Freedom Day itself was not a European or American invention. The day actually has its , adopted by a meeting of African journalists in 1991. As the ‘West’ loses its moral leadership on these issues, there are at least some signs that others can and will take its place.

3.  seems more relevant than ever. Already ailing from the collapse of its economic model and hard-hit by the whirlwind of digital technology, public interest journalism now has revitalised its energy and purpose.

Journalists are rising to the challenge of growing concerns over public mistrust in established sources of information and social media’s role in spreading falsehoods. Broadcasters like the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ, which aim to offer something to everyone, certainly have to work ever harder to keep being seen as reliable and relevant by all of their audiences. 

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As for Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Media Action, I believe a major reason our work is valued by our 150+ partners is that we support genuinely independent media organisations, which serve all of society, whether in , Tanzania or .

Last year, we reached more than 100 million people through our support of democratic governance programmes. The sheer size of this audience suggests that people – rich and poor, rural and urban alike – want the media to provide reliable information and rigorous debate, so that they can make up their own minds about the issues they face.

It’s certainly been a gloomy year for media freedom but, if I took anything away from the conversations in Jakarta, it’s that the outlook is far from hopeless.

 is Director of Policy and Learning at Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Media Action. He tweets as .

There's a lack of data on what ordinary people think, feel and want in developing countries. Our new aims to help fix that. Sonia Whitehead runs through five questions the portal can help answer on governance, media and resilience.

The development world is all aflutter about data. There’s much talk of a , the sector’s hiring and the World Bank just launched a to ‘data crunch the world’.  

Not to dampen all this excitement but we need a lot more data about people in the Global South before it can become a transformative force there. Addressing this lack of data will speed up progress on everything from to .  

Enter our new  (view on desktop), which brings together data, reports and visualisations from surveys conducted in 13 developing countries that there aren't a lot of statistics about. Over five years, we asked more than 75,000 (rarely polled) people about what they think, feel and want. The portal covers a range of issues from what they’re most worried about to how interested they are in politics.  

We want these insights to help development leaders, practitioners and researchers better understand ordinary people in the developing world so they can produce more effective strategies, projects and communications.

To mark the launch of the portal, we run through five questions that it can help answer on , and , while also showcasing the different types of content available on the portal.

1. What sources of information do people trust?

Being a media organisation, we wanted to know whether people believe what they hear on the airwaves, see on TV and read online. We found that trust levels in radio are universally high, at over 80% in , and , and reaching 90% in .

However, people are more circumspect about the truthfulness of the internet, with the , which is concerning given that say they go online in order to read the news.

To illustrate these (and other) insights into what media people think of different sources of information, we produced a series of visualisations – some of the ones for Kenya are previewed below (media visual available , governance one ): 

A free and independent media that holds politicians to account on behalf of citizens has long been held up as a cornerstone of a thriving democracy.

In Sierra Leone, we ran a radio debate show called (Talk about Sierra Leone) (TBS) that tried to do just that. On air for over four years, TBS followed a classic ‘question and answer’ (Q&A) format and gave ordinary people a platform to quiz their leaders. The underlying idea was that citizens would take the opportunity to demand greater accountability from government, resulting in better service delivery.

TBS achieved a great deal. The show had an audience of over a million people and those who regularly listened to it were three times more likely to get involved in politics than those who never tuned in.

Yet despite its successes, the TBS model of confronting leaders and demanding responses might not be the best way of in Sierra Leone. Argument often turns to frustration while conversation – if inclusive, nuanced, constructive – can breed a deeper sense of satisfaction, of progress.   

Unwilling politicians, uncomfortable audiences

The biggest challenge faced by the TBS producers was that most senior government figures consistently refused to appear on the show. We often had to explain to our audiences that a chair was empty because a politician had failed to honour our invitation. It seems that leaders feel little obligation to make media appearances that will require them to answer difficult questions.

And even if an official does turn up, there’s no guarantee it’ll go well. During , a Bank of Sierra Leone representative got up and walked straight out of the studio as soon as he realised that another panellist was a previous governor of the Bank.

Even when panellists stay for the whole show, both they and the audience aren’t particularly comfortable with the Q&A format. Many Sierra Leoneans think questioning, especially of ‘big people’, is just plain rude.

Instead, the audience are often more interested in making statements than enquiries. Sharing information appears to be a better starting point for solving persistent, local problems. Audiences seem to find that leading with their own personal experiences and opinions sparks the types of productive and honest conversations with leaders, which leave them more satisfied that issues will actually be addressed.

An ideal political discussion? Frank and fruitful

This all brings us to consider the sorts of issues that audiences most want addressed. According to a in 2015, the top priority for 75% of Sierra Leoneans is service delivery. People want the media to cover the local issues that affect them directly, , which don’t feel as relevant to their lives.

For example, one TBS episode was recorded in an area affected by a large mining operation. A local chief in the audience stood up and spoke about the problems faced by local communities. Notably, he spoke in Temne, a local language, instead of Krio, the national lingua franca normally used on the show. As Temne is the first language of the communities most affected by the issues, his words carried added authority, and helped his comments strike a chord with both the live audience and those listening at home. Swayed by the chief’s words, the mining company’s representative on the panel pledged to do more to help those affected by the company’s operations.   

Another TBS episode, taped in Kono district during the 2012 local elections, helped resolve tensions between the two main parties following an incident of political violence. Both parties committed publicly to participating peacefully and issued warnings that supporters who acted otherwise would be expelled. There were no other outbreaks of violence for the rest of the election period and our hope is that the show helped contribute to this.

In recognition of the importance that audiences place on improving local service delivery, we've been supporting local radio stations to develop and produce their own local debate shows that are more responsive to the specific needs of their district.

A more solutions-focused approach?

To figure out how to best improve accountability in Sierra Leone, it might be useful to : ‘answerability’ and ‘responsiveness’. Answerability requires decision-makers to explain their actions to the public. Responsiveness is more about behaviour – the extent to which public institutions and leaders take notice of citizens’ needs and try to meet them.

Q&A programmes typically aim to achieve answerability. But Sierra Leonean audiences are unlikely to ask the tough questions needed to achieve this goal. Even if they did, their leaders don’t typically have the skills and confidence to answer them well.

Responsiveness, on the other hand, aligns more closely with Sierra Leonean culture. Having two-way conversations, rallying around a shared goal, recognising problems for what they are, giving leaders space to move beyond a problem towards solutions that everyone can get behind. These things all come far more naturally to Sierra Leoneans; they also seem to value them more.

Through providing platforms for shared problem-solving, the media could prove even more successful at engaging audiences and improving accountability. The recipe for success will likely be holding conversations that lead to practical improvements to services, which people will notice in their everyday lives.  

This approach has parallels with ‘’, which is about reporting on ways of improving the future, in addition to examining the problems of the present.

We’re currently applying these ideas to our new national radio show  (We the people), which aims to build a more meaningful and honest dialogue between decision-makers and ordinary people. A recent episode on the national school feeding programme looked at why the scheme works better in certain areas than others. The episode featured a government official promising to apply lessons from the most successful areas elsewhere.

The lessons we learned from broadcasting TBS have proved invaluable in adapting our programmes to more closely matche the public’s interests and behaviour. With Wi Di Pipul, we will continue to involve Sierra Leone’s leaders and audiences in meaningful and honest conversations, to further enhance accountability in the country.

has been the Country Director for Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Media Action in Sierra Leone since 2010. George previously worked for Village Aid, a small UK NGO specialising in non-formal learning and empowerment approaches. George has also completed 2 years as a VSO volunteer in the Niger Delta and previously spent 2 years working with Accenture. 

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Katy Williams asked political debate show presenters in Nepal and Afghanistan about the real-life changes their programmes have helped achieve. Successes include getting more people with disabilities working in government ministries and prompting other organisations to support communities. 

Nepalis and Afghans alike are used to politicians making pledges they don’t fulfil. So, when the studio lights fade on a political debate broadcast, audiences have little expectation that decision-makers will follow up on any promises made on stage.

It’s often understandable why politicians don’t always honour the promises they make on air. Their efforts may be thwarted by a change in government, putting them out of office before they can enact change. They themselves may not be senior enough to take the necessary steps. And, moved by first-hand accounts of hardship, they often over-promise on what they can actually deliver, when answering candid questions put to them directly by ordinary people.  

Sometimes leaders defy expectations

Yet ministers do sometimes take action after appearing on talk shows, notes Daud Junbish, presenter of Afghanistan’s (Open Assembly) debate show. One of the highest profile examples of this was when double amputee challenged then-President Karzai on the lack of provisions made for people with disabilities. After the programme, Karzai invited Asadullah to a ministerial meeting. Karzai later decreed that every government ministry should employ a person with a disability to act as an adviser - a commitment that he lived up to.

More recently, Nepal’s debate programme  (Common Questions) covered pollution in the Kathmandu valley. The production team took the environment minister to the area where people were most affected by road dust, so he could see the extent of the problem for himself. “He promised to water the roads to dampen down the dust and immediately followed up on that pledge after the show”, said the show’s presenter Bidhya Chapagain.

As to what Sajha Sawal panellists think, ten from the last two years were randomly selected and asked if the programme had led them to take new action. Five said it had. The remainder generally blamed their relative inactivity on a change in government, which meant they’d lost power before they could enact their promises. Perhaps not surprisingly, those who succeeded in doing things differently were mainly ministers, state ministers and heads of parliamentary committees. 

It’s more about supporting debate than being a ‘watchdog’

In reality, our governance programmes work on a far more nuanced level than ‘question, answer, response’. A ‘watchdog’ approach, whereby an assertive media and empowered citizenry demand accountability from their leaders can be overly simplistic and .

“We expect our guests to follow up on their commitments but we don’t expect overnight changes in policy,” says Bidhya. “We hope it creates debate. We hope it has that power. The debates often kick-start a wider debate which other media outlets follow up on.”

Open Jirga presenter Daud also notes that playing hardball with politicians is a dangerous game in a country damaged by four decades of war. “Every politician is under pressure. They are suspicious. They can become aggressive. And they may suspect me of taking sides.”

He insists his role is to coax people to be brave and speak up, to give voice to the marginalised – often illiterate women from rural areas. “At the start, five years ago no one raised their arm. Now we have lots of people, including women, asking questions. I can safely say we have given voice to real people.”

Indeed, amplifying people’s voices, creating safe spaces for debate and providing information are ends in themselves, in addition to serving as core pillars of a functioning democracy.

Gripping, real life stories can bring about change

Bidhya has written before about , a 15-year old girl displaced by Nepal’s devastating 2015 earthquake.She believes in the power of ‘immersive programmes’ to prompt other organisations in Nepal to help communities. For example, one episode of Sajha Sawal was shot in a very poor Dalit community in the Terai, in southern Nepal.

The team spent six days living there during the recording. “I am not from that community but for several days I ate, sat and slept alongside them. It was a remarkable way of ensuring that unheard voices were heard.”

Viewers – and panellists – were able to ‘experience’ that children didn’t attend school, the poor sanitation, lack of clean drinking water, high levels of illiteracy and low likelihood of having citizenship. “The response was huge. Now, an NGO and student volunteers are supporting children to be back in school – and helping build toilets.” recalled Bidhya.

This kind of approach is more likely to engage audiences, and catalyse on-the-ground changes.

Building bridges or bridging divides?

Concrete improvements to public services have certainly followed in the wake of many of our shows. But there are less tangible changes that run deeper, Daud insists. He says that other broadcasters have copied his technique of flipping from one official language to the other (Dari to Pashto) to ensure that everyone understands what’s happening. It’s now something he’s noticed even the president of Afghanistan himself do.

“There has been real rivalry between the two language groups. By speaking in both languages we bridged this divide. That is creating real change by bringing people together.”

Bidyha points out that women in Nepal now feel safe about sharing their issues and problems with her on air. “With this growing acceptance of women asking questions and putting themselves forward I think our society is gradually changing. I am hoping that, the day is not that far away when every family will feel proud to have a girl in their family.”

There’s a lot more to find out about how political programmes affect people’s lives. Finding the answers will involve going beyond measuring tangible successes – like building a bridge. But it’s also about taking stock of less concrete, more long-term changes – like bridging societal divides.

Katy Williams is Research Editor at Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Media Action, she tweets as . Daud Junbish presents (Open Assembly) in Afghanistan, he tweets as . Bidhya Chapagain presents (Common Questions) in Nepal, she tweets as .

This blog follows the launch of our new practice briefing, ‘’ which looks at how media can help people influence their leaders, drawing on research from nine countries.   

Related content:

Practice briefing:

Blog:

Research report: 

A hub for content relating to our 'Governance and Accountability' event, including a film and Storify summary of the panel discussion as well as links to relevant blogs and reports.

Watch the film of the  with top panellists from Oxfam GB, Article 19, the Omidyar Network, the World Bank and Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Media Action.

Duncan Green, Senior Strategic Advisor for Oxfam GB, shares his key takeaways from our Governance and Accountability event.

This blog was originally posted on Oxfam's . 

A recurring pattern: I get invited to join a conversation with a bunch of specialists on a particular issue (eg ). Cue panic and some quick skim-reading of background papers, driven by the familiar fear of finally being exposed as a total fraud (some of us spend all our lives waiting for the tap on the shoulder). Then a really interesting conversation. Relief!

Last week it was the role of the media in governance,  at the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ, organized by the excellent , the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ’s international development charity. Recording .

What emerged was a picture of increasing churn and fragmentation – a media and information ecosystem that is casting off vestiges of linearity (a few big newspapers and one or two big TV and radio stations) and becoming far more complex (social media, online, local radio, ever more channels of everything).

In response, just as with governance and markets, those trying to promote change and development are starting to think in terms of systems rather than linear theories of change. It’s no longer good enough (if it ever was) to look for the lever to pull to trigger change (a new law, an article in the FT). Instead, just as with governance, there is a twin track emerging:

Enabling environment: Broad brush support through legislation (right to information, media independence, protecting sources), access (spread of 4G, literacy) is a role for outsiders that doesn’t require them to fathom the complexity of local media systems.

However, the consensus in the room was that this is not enough – echoes of the Twaweza debate a few years back, where they found that the theory of change ‘giving people access to information → social and political action’ failed because they hadn’t thought about the assumptions behind the arrow.

So what else is needed? An  by Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Media Action of a massive 6 year, DFID-funded project on using media to increase accountability by inspiring political participation (it reached >190m people in 12 countries) provided some interesting clues (full evaluation ):

• Enabling discussions and brokering relationships, not just providing information (seems like we’re learning from the experiences of Twaweza)
• The centrality of local context – eg some societies and cultures (and political systems) like confrontational media formats, while others prefer collaboration. The implication for funders is the importance of local staff and local partnerships – outsiders are never going to understand the system
• Critical Junctures (eg elections, natural disasters or protest movements) provide the natural rhythm for engaging both with media and politics

An associated  claims ‘audiences participate more in politics than people who do not listen to and/or
watch its programmes, even when taking other influencing factors – such as age, income and interest in politics – into account’. Not sure whether that is attribution  or association (eg what if a third factor, like church or other organizational membership or family background, leads people both to watch socially aware programmes and take part in political action?) but will leave that to the evaluation geeks.

Digging into the numbers a bit further, the evaluation also found a mixed picture on the equity impact of its media work: larger increases in participation were seen in groups that traditionally participate less, but on the other hand, the increase in participation was greater among men than among women (presumably because of other constraints on mobility, time etc).

Senior Governance Adviser Will Taylor reviews the World Development Report 2017.

There’s a lot to like in the , published earlier this week. , author of Working with the Grain, and DFID’s have already run through some of what it got right – and also identified areas for expansion.

Most importantly for us, it felt like an exciting and overdue breakthrough for media into the mainstream of governance debates in international development. The report references media more than 75 times, collating the increasingly extensive evidence base for media’s impact on governance.

Even more encouragingly, an independent and active media isn’t treated as a standalone issue, which only interests specialists removed from the hustle and bustle of 'real' governance work. Not only does media gets its own spotlight, it’s also well-integrated into the report as a whole.

To pick just a few quotes – media is described as an “indispensable component of citizen empowerment and collective action” and a “key actor” on transparency. It’s also said to play an “important role” in reshaping preferences and social norms within societies and a “central role” as an agent of accountability. The World Development Report (WDR) even argues that “access to media makes government more responsive to citizens’ needs.”

And yet, there were a couple of areas where I was left wanting more.

Protecting civic space, investing in quality journalism

Firstly, the report paints a depressing – if accurate – global picture of closing civic space, accompanied by increasing restrictions on media and civil society organisations (see Figure 8.10 from page 235 of the below). 

Our most popular blogs of the year, featuring: discussion of alternatives to counter-propaganda, tips for successful health communication and recommendations of both development films to watch and Twitter accounts to follow.

It’s been a busy first few months for the Insight blog. Since our launch at the end of June, we’ve covered a diverse array of topics, from and the , to and .

We’ve summarised key finding of our reports on , and , as well as giving a behind-the-scenes look at our , which pushed the envelope in generating media development evidence.

With an eye on what the wider international development sector’s been up to, we’ve responded to the and marked International Human Rights Day with . It’s also been fantastic to have featured guest blogs by experts from the and the – and we hope to have many more contributions next year (email us if you’re interested). 

So as we reflect on 2016, here are our five most popular blogs of the year:  

To help reboot your Twitter timeline, we recommended some international development accounts – focusing on governance, health and humanitarian affairs – that are well worth following. We aimed to feature a variety of voices from across the great expanse of the Twittersphere, and included some familiar handles while introducing to some new faces who should definitely be on your radar.

The effectiveness of IS’s international communication machine, along with that of other extremist groups, has prompted increasingly urgent attempts at crafting effective information responses by policy makers around the world.

Reflecting on these efforts, James Deane and Will Taylor expressed their concern that investing in ‘counter-narratives’ – what some would term counter-propaganda – is not always supported by good evidence. And yet it is here where increasing resources are being focused sometimes, they feared, at the expense of other efforts designed to support free and independent media and other information efforts that might be more effective at reducing violent extremism.

Caroline Sugg summarised five recommendations for accelerating progress in global health communication from our  looking at what makes  excellent health communication, how to fund it and – most crucially – why it should be at the centre of public health work.

Panellists stressed the importance of empathy and community engagement, the need to go ‘beyond messaging’ in communication efforts and invest in evidence and the imperative to prioritise local ownership

For more on this topic,  read Caroline Sugg’s paper.

Films in the international development sector are often associated with fundraising but they can also serve as a form of aid in themselves. Films can help mothers manage a pregnancy, assist refugees as they navigate life in an unfamiliar country and influence perceptions of what politicians can achieve.

We selected five examples of ‘film aid’, including a drama series for teenagers aimed at tackling risky sexual behaviour, a skit to warn refugees about scammers and Nepal’s version of The West Wing.

The World Health Organization’s Dr Venkatraman Chandra-Mouli and Marina Plesons looked at how two education programmes used community engagement to promote young people’s sexual and reproductive health in Pakistan. Their guest blog examined how Aahung and Rutgers WPF – a Pakistani and Dutch organisation respectively – have adapted to local culture and worked with the media to respond to backlash to their sensitive work.

That’s all from the Insight blog for 2016. Looking ahead to next year, Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Media Action will launch its new data portal. We’re also due to publish blogs on conducting research in Syria, shifting social norms in Ethiopia and accountability in Somaliland so watch this space!               

 is Digital Editor of the Media Action Insight blog; she tweets as .