UNESCO welcomes feedback on new draft indicators for media viability
Members of Los Palos community radio in Timor Leste who took part in UNESCO survey on sustainability model for community radios. © UNESCO
UNESCO invites media and media monitoring experts to provide feedback on a new set of indicators on media viability, developed in partnership with the Deutsche Welle Akademie. The draft indicators, which are designed to help measure the level of media sustainability in any given country, were presented at the recent meeting of the intergovernmental Bureau of the International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC).
They follow the same methodology, structure and presentation as the UNESCO-IPDC Media Development Indicators (MDIs), an internationally endorsed tool for assessing national media landscapes and identifying media development gaps. The new indicators on viability will be integrated, in a ‘lite’ version, into the existing MDI framework.
This will enable UNESCO to collect data on the viability of media as economically sustainable entities, whether commercial or non-profit, when evaluating national media landscapes. In addition, a more elaborate and detailed version of the indicators has been developed to enable comprehensive stand-alone studies on media viability.
The media viability indicators have been designed following a consultative process. A first draft, prepared on UNESCO’s behalf by Robert Picard, Director of Research at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford, was discussed at a UNESCO workshop on ‘Media, Sustainability and the post-2015 agenda’ in Montevideo on 16 December 2014. The workshop was attended by 25 media experts from Latin America.
In January 2015, further feedback was received through an online consultation process involving some 60 media and media monitoring experts from all regions.
UNESCO is now seeking to expand this consultation process by publishing the revised indicators on its website. The Organization invites experts to provide comments on the proposed indicators, taking into account the need for the indicators to be operational and the practical implications of cost and time for collecting the relevant measurement data. Attention should be given also to the different challenges that may exist depending on the context in which the indicators are being applied.
To view the draft indicators, please click here. All feedback should be sent to Saorla McCabe, Coordinator of the MDI initiative at UNESCO, by 30 April: s.mccabe(at)unesco.org
Once finalized, UNESCO intends to pilot these indicators in selected countries to help relevant actors develop appropriate responses that can promote media viability as an important pillar of media development.
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