EDITION DW AkADEMIE #2017 MEDIA DEVELOPMENT Audience research in Media Development Overview, case studies, and lessons learned With nancial support from the Imprint AUTHORS EDITORS PUBLISHER Dennis Reineck Dennis Reineck Deutsche Welle Laura Schneider Laura Schneider Bonn Christoph Spurk Christoph Spurk Germany Esther Dorn-Fellermann Jan Lublinski Charles Nyambuga RESPONSIBLE Roland Schuerho PUBLISHED Christian Gramsch October © DW Akademie EDITION DW AKADEMIE #2017 MEDIA DEVELOPMENT Audience research in Media Development Overview, case studies, and lessons learned Dennis Reineck, Laura Schneider and Christoph Spurk (eds.) 2 Audience research in Media Development Contents Executive Summary ....................................................................................................................................................... 4 Introduction ................................................................................................................................................................. 6 . Audience research in media development: an overview ............................................................................................ 7 . Dening audience research in media development ............................................................................................ 7 . Current audience research in media development ............................................................................................. 10 .. CIBAR: International Broadcasters' Media Audience Research ............................................................................. 10 .. Studies by state bodies, NGOs, or private market research organizations ............................................................. 11 .. Academic studies ............................................................................................................................................. 12 .. Media development organizations: diversity in quantity and quality .................................................................. 13 . Conclusions ..................................................................................................................................................... 15 . Case Study : Critical media and information literacy: testing a test in the Palestinian Territories .............................. 16 . Introduction .................................................................................................................................................... 16 . Research methodology ..................................................................................................................................... 17 . Findings .......................................................................................................................................................... 18 . Conclusions ..................................................................................................................................................... 21 . Case Study : Impacts of listening to radio. The “Land Rights and Women” radio program at Radio Nam Lolwe in Kisumu, Kenya ................................................................................................................................... 23 . Introduction .................................................................................................................................................... 23 . Research methodology ..................................................................................................................................... 24 . Findings .......................................................................................................................................................... 25 . Conclusions ..................................................................................................................................................... 29 . Case Study : Improving the social media use of Colombian community radios: a method triangulation ............................................................................................................................................ 31 . Introduction .................................................................................................................................................... 31 . Research methodology ..................................................................................................................................... 32 . Findings .......................................................................................................................................................... 33 . Conclusions ..................................................................................................................................................... 37 . Lessons learned and way forward ............................................................................................................................. 40 Literature ...................................................................................................................................................................... 44 Edition DW Akademie 3 Executive summary utilizing dierent innovative methodologies, and located in dierent parts of the developing world. The results have both This publication takes a look at current developments in the implications for media development practice as well as for eld of audience research in media development and presents how audience research ought to be conducted. three case studies testing innovative methods that can be of use for research, monitoring, and evaluation. They are meant The rst case study dealt with the measurement of Media and In- as an orientation and inspirational source for future projects formation Literacy (MIL) of young media users aged to years in this domain. in the Palestinian Territories (West Bank). From the media devel- Based on the information assembled in this study we opment perspective, the following insights were gained: make the case that media development needs audience re- – The schools that had taken part in MIL courses (proj- search to improve its projects. Media development actors ect schools) fared slightly better than those that did not, need to know more about the impact on their nal benecia- though the dierences were smaller than expected. ries if they want their work to be truly successful. – Girls fared much better than boys. Project school girls also However, it does not always make sense for media de- received signicantly better test results than their non- velopment actors to conduct or commission expensive and project compatriots. broadly representative research. Budgets and project sizes – The project school participants fared worse than their non- are limited, and oen the results of market or academic re- project counterparts at only three skills (source transpar- search eorts are only of very general use to a particular me- ency, source diversity, and respect of privacy). dia development project in question. Therefore ways have to be found to conduct focused audience research in media de- Lessons learned from a methodological audience research per- velopment – in order to gain specic and relevant knowledge spective were: directly related to the interventions. – Measuring MIL in this age group requires hands-on testing. The three case studies we present in this publication are Abstract questionnaires do not seem to have the same va- directly related to ongoing media development projects. lidity as practical tests. They apply tailor-made approaches to a particular setting. On – Media examples and item language have to be adjusted to top of this, we have assembled more general knowledge from the levels of juvenile age groups. the literature and past studies in audience research that are – Absolute comparisons of test items are not possible because of relevance here. it is almost impossible to construct MIL questions that are The main ambition for this project and publication was exactly of the same di¢culty. Thus, relative comparisons for DW Akademie to gather in depth practice-related knowl- should be drawn between dierent groups of pupils. edge. We want to share our lessons in a transparent manner. Therefore, we do not only present convincing approaches The second case study focused on the impact of radio broad- and positive results. We openly discuss pitfalls, limitations, casts on women and land rights (station: Nam Lolwe) in Kenya. challenges, and ways forward. It was designed as a quasi-experiment, comparing listeners of the radio stations to potential listeners and non-listeners. The Denition and functions ndings in terms of media development practice included: Audience research in media development is dened here as – It is of utmost importance that media development orga- any rigorous empirical enquiry into the behavior, knowledge, nizations monitor the content and its quality. This is the and attitudes of persons in the developing world receiving, en- pre-condition to achieve impact. gaging with, and/or non-professionally contributing to media – Personal communication and radio were found to be the content, on the basis of social science methodology and/or main sources of information for all participants. technical measurement. Audience research in media develop- – Age has a signicant in¤uence on people’s attitudes to- ment can have functions for exploring potential target groups, wards land rights and women, elderly people tending to be monitoring