Since 1 April 2016, Media Development Foundation (MDF) has been conducting the pre-election media monitoring of TV and online media. The project aims at promoting unbiased coverage of 2016 parliamentary elections and creating equal environment for political parties. The primary targets of the project are political parties, media organizations, journalists and NGOs mainly focused on elections.

Media monitoring subjects:

Primetime TV news programs:  Georgian Public Broadcaster, Rustavi 2, Imedi, Maestro, Kavkasia, Tabula, GDS;  (On 1 June, the list was extended to include TV Obiektivi, which started news programs from 16 May).

Online media outlets: Interpressnews, PIA, Netgazeti, Pirveli Radio, Marshalpress. 

From April 1 to June 1, primetime news programs were monitored (except weekends); in case of mixed format of news program (for example: the main news program of GDS) the target of the monitoring is the news section of the program.

After official announcement of electoral campaign, from 1 June monitoring cover weekend prime-time TV news programs and online outlets as well.

Political subjects of the monitoring:  The focus of monitoring is the coverage of the following political subjects: qualified and nonqualified political parties, including opposition, independent MPs, the Government, the President, and the Central Election Commission (CEC). Monitoring counts political parties separately as well as political coalitions.  The Government and the institute of the President are counted separately too. The members of the Parliament and City Council are attributed to those parties which they represent.  

Variables of the monitoring: the monitoring is conducted by quantitative and qualitative methods, according to the following variables: Direct/Indirect coverage of political subjects (according to the monitoring methodology, indirect coverage means a media outlet or a person/respondent speaking about a political subject and not the political subject him/herself); Tone of Content and Context in covering political subjects (Positive/Negative/Neutral); Gender representation; Instances of hate speech; the qualitative part implies the identification of problems in terms of journalistic ethics, such as unbalanced reporting, visual manipulation etc.

Quantitative analysis

The monitors’ will measure:

• The length of time or amount of space given to each political actor; whether direct speech/ interviews or the number of indirect mentions;
• The number of times a particular word is used to describe a particular politician (online); 

• The number of times a particular campaign issue was reported. 

• The number of women candidates quoted and gender balance of media coverage; 

• Hate speech cases and their sources.

For broadcast media monitoring also involves measurement of:

• Total time in seconds of a story on each relevant political subject ;

• Total time in seconds that the candidate/party appears and speaks on screen (direct coverage); 

• Time in seconds the image of the candidate or party representative appears without 
speaking (e.g., even when a political subject might not be presenting his or her own 
version of events, he or she is shown on camera) (indirect coverage); 

• Time in seconds the voice of the candidate or party representative is heard (even if 
there is no film or photograph); 
           

Qualitative assessments

• Monitors measure content and context
• Headlines, illustrations, graphics, photographs and video images are also analyzed. 

• Monitors report about lies, distortions, unbalanced and unethical coverage. Such instances will be presented as a case study in the midterm and final reports.             

The project is supported by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Georgia. The monitoring methodology for MDF was developed by Dominique Thierry, media consultant of Free Press Unlimited (FPU), the Dutch partner organization of the project.

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