Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP)

GMMP draws on participatory strategies that guide activists in taking a "snapshot" of the media, documenting the participation of men and women and gender portrayal. The GMMP involves phases: media monitoring and research; dissemination and promotion; and advocacy.

In the first phase, participants engage in both quantitative and qualitative analysis of the media on one particular day (in 1995, this day was held in January; in 2000 and 2005, it was held in February). The quantitative component of the project provides a picture of the numbers of women and men in the world's news, the types of stories in which they are found, the roles they play in the news, and so on. For each of the three media - television, radio, and newspapers - organisers provide monitors with a guide (downloadable in PDF format - in English, French, and Spanish) that sets out the areas in which information is needed and a range of possible answers. Monitors are asked to choose a number that corresponds to the relevant answer (using the step-by-step examples provided in the guide), and to enter this code on a coding sheet. The quality of the coverage is also analysed in an effort to get a more complete picture of news content through a detailed study of selected news stories. Designed to illustrate basic patterns in news reporting, this analysis is the responsibility of the GMMP national and regional coordinators, but individual monitors are asked to help identify suitable stories.

The monitoring data submitted to WACC from across the world is then analysed for patterns of gender portrayal in the news. This analysis has been geared toward creating a tested and refined research instrument, and establishing a benchmark to serve as a standard for measuring future change. The results of this media monitoring, as well as an illustration of any changes in gender representation and portrayal in the world's news since the previous studies, are then published in global, regional, and national reports (and made available online. In addition, the top ten highlights of the findings and country reports in a variety of languages from some of the participating countries are available online. Official "launches" of these reports are then held as part of an effort to promote change based on the project. For instance, the GMMP 2005 global report was launched at the beginning of 2006 at an international event held in London, the United Kingdom (UK), with launches of the regional and national reports taking place in participating countries on the same day. These events announce and stimulate a campaign to disseminate the results of GMMP and to get the gender and media issues that GMMP highlights on to the public agenda through media coverage.

As part of phase three, gender and media groups in participating countries use the GMMP results as a tool for national advocacy work. While the shape of these advocacy campaigns varies according to context, the shared aim is to create a dialogue with the media to develop and implement guidelines and policies oriented toward more gender-sensitive news media. For example, in Cambodia the GMMP 2005 report informed the advocacy work of the non-government organisation (NGO) the Women's Media Centre by providing evidence about patterns of unfair and degrading representations of women in the media. That evidence was used in engaging the Cambodian press to change their practices. GMMP 2005 included expanded support to advocacy, with 7 regional training workshops held from 2006 to 2008 in Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, Anglophone Africa, Francophone Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America. Declarations and recommendations from these workshops are available at the GMMP website.

The studies are also designed to be used for training and awareness-raising initiatives. For example, in Jamaica, Women's Media Watch (WMW) has used GMMP results and reports as part of their ongoing training sessions with trainee communications personnel at the Caribbean Institute for Media and Communication, as well as in their workshops on gender and sexuality with young Jamaican men.

The GMMP publishes a periodic electronic newsletter entitled "Media and Gender Monitor" that provides updates about participants' actions. It can be downloaded at the GMMP website.

The fourth GMMP was launched a bit early - in November 2009 - in order to publish the results in time for key global processes scheduled for 2010, including the Beijing +15 review and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Review Summit. The decision to coordinate a fourth GMMP was a response to calls from gender and communication groups worldwide to map whether and how media representations of women and men have changed since 2005. Discussions at the regional training workshops (described above) contributed to shaping directions for GMMP 2009/2010 - as did an October 2008 Cape Town, South Africa, meeting of partners who undertook key co-ordination roles for GMMP 2005.

Gender.

GMMP was born out of the 1994 international Bangkok conference on "Women Empowering Communication", offered by WACC in conjunction with two other international women's networks. The first GMMP, which was organised by the NGO MediaWatch Canada, involved analysis of over 15,000 news stories by hundreds of volunteers in 71 countries. The results were presented in the publication "Global Media Monitoring Project: Women's Participation in the News" and were released at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. In 2000, participating groups in 70 countries generated over 50,000 data records from some 16,000 news stories; preliminary results were released in time for Beijing +5 events in June 2000; and the final results were published in a book entitled Who Makes the News? Seventy-six countries took part in GMMP 2005.

Information released just prior to the fourth (2009/2010) GMMP indicated that the network's membership spans over 100 countries on every continent across the world. It includes gender and communication groups, women's media associations, women's grassroots groups, and researchers in academia who participated in the previous GMMPs of 1995, 2000, and 2005.

As the French monitoring group put it, GMMP "is changing the way we read the media...and it will help us to show other journalists how and why things need to change." In 2004 the GMMP was selected by the Feminist Scholarship Division of the International Communication Association (ICA) as their nomination for the ICA award of Most Important Applied/Public Policy Research Programme.