Community media needs extensive rethink around covering elections, says new report
PICTURE: Thomas Chauke/Pexels
On 29 May 2024, South Africa marked 30 years of democracy by holding its 7th National and Provincial Elections. To assess how community media contributed to this milestone, Media Monitoring Africa (MMA), with support from the Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa (EISA), conducted a comprehensive media monitoring exercise.
The findings, captured in a newly released report, ‘Whose Voice Counts?’, highlight the vital role played by community media in informing and engaging voters, while also identifying areas for further development.
Community media remains a crucial pillar in South Africa’s democratic landscape. Their ability to foster political discourse, encourage voter participation, and provide fair and representative coverage is more important than ever
The 2024 elections also underscored the significance of community media in voter education. From explaining voter registration to detailing polling station locations and party candidate information, these platforms played a pivotal role in empowering citizens – especially in the wake of the Electoral Amendment Act.
Community media are defined as:
- controlled by a non-profit entity for non-commercial purposes
- serving a specific community
- encouraging community participation in selecting and providing programmes, and
- those which may be funded through donations, grants, sponsorships, advertising or membership fees
The period of monitoring of community media for the elections was from 1 April to 28 June 2024. This period was selected to analyse elections coverage prior and post voting day.
MMA monitored 21 South African community media outlets, including print, online and broadcast platforms. These included six radio stations with three daily news bulletins (morning, afternoon, and evening), and 15 newspapers published in both print and online formats.
The monitoring was conducted in five provinces – Gauteng, the Western Cape, Limpopo, kwaZulu Natal and the Eastern Cape. A total of five languages – English, Afrikaans, IsiXhosa, IsiZulu and Tshivenda – were monitored. Audience/readership, media accessibility and the location of human media monitors were considered when selecting the media sample.
MMA’s team identified and recorded all media stories containing the keywords ‘elections’, ‘vote’, ‘NPE’, ‘Independent Electoral Commission’ and ‘IEC’. Details of each story were captured using MMA’s online in-house media monitoring tool, Dexter, as per the user-guide.
Community media published a total of 774 election-related stories: 583 from the six monitored radio stations and 191 from the 15 online and newspaper publications. This coverage was significantly lower than that of the SABC, which published 5 020 stories, and privately-owned media, which produced 6 859 stories during the same period.
The limited coverage by community media is likely due to resource constraints and other challenges. While this is not a direct comparison, it highlights the significant disparity in election reporting between community and larger media outlets.
Radio was the dominant platform for election reporting, accounting for 75% of all election-related stories in community media.
Community media is expected to report on and reflect the challenges faced by the communities they serve. However, the report’s findings reveal that their focus was primarily on election results and election logistics – topics that do not directly address the
needs or concerns of community members
To better serve their audiences, community media should prioritise reporting on issues that directly impact their communities, such as service delivery, which received only 4% of the coverage. Notably, poverty was among the least-covered topics. despite being highly relevant during elections.
As South Africa is one of the most unequal countries in the world, according to the Inequality Trends in South Africa report by Stats SA, poverty should have been a central focus of election coverage. Community media should have made a concerted effort to spotlight such critical issues, given their significant impact on community development.
Fifty-two political parties contested the elections. Our analysis shows that 10 political parties made up 92% of all sources, while the remaining 42 parties and independents accounted for just 8% of the voice share.
These findings highlight that community media did not sufficiently provide equitable election coverage to all political parties and Independents, limiting their opportunity to share their mandates and manifestos.
MMA also analysed political party representation over time and our research shows that during the entire monitoring period, the ANC dominated coverage.
Quality journalism relies on diverse sources across various topics. In our media monitoring, MMA defines a ‘source’ as any individual directly or indirectly quoted, pictured or mentioned in a news story. A total of 11 728 sources were captured using Dexter.
Our analysis revealed the following:
- 89% of the 11 728 sources were affiliated to the top five affiliations, namely: political parties; national government; commissions and independent bodies (including the IEC); professionals and local government
- political parties dominated the coverage at 51%
- the affiliation, professionals, had a voice share of 4% and these included sources such as health workers, social workers and teachers
- other affiliations such as the public, experts, unions and the justice system shared the remaining 11%, and
- the voice of the public was not audible enough to feature on the top 5 list of sources by affiliation as it only had a voice share of 2%
Community media should prioritise sources that represent the voices and interests of the communities they serve. The findings indicate that the top five sources by affiliation did not include significant representation from community members
This suggests that the elections were more focused on political parties at the expense of the electorate.
The results show that women featured in coverage of the elections as sources at only 37%, compared to 63% recorded for men. This disparity is not new as all our research shows media’s preference of male sources.
The findings do not align with the country’s demographics, as females make up approximately 51% of the population, according to Stats SA’s 2024 Mid-Year Population
report. Additionally, more women registered to vote than men, according to the IEC.
This then begs the question, why did community media prioritise male sources over females? The findings show that only 7% (54 stories) of all monitored stories had a bias evident, with the following criteria used to assess bias:
- where the language used in a news item clearly and distinctly favoured one party over another, or disfavoured/damaged the image of a party or parties: be it through exaggeration, generalisation, or trivialisation
- where it is clear that one or more parties were favoured, by virtue of how they were reported overall
- where a party was not given the opportunity to respond to substantial allegations, or to an issue of substantial importance to that party (omission)
From the 54 stories where bias was detected, bias by omission was the most common form of bias during the elections, followed by bias by presentation. Community media are commended for their efforts in minimising excessive bias in their reporting. However, all media should aim for zero-tolerance to bias to ensure fair and more equitable representation of all involved.
One of the most concerning findings is the lack of solutions explored in the stories. During elections, the media are expected to interrogate politicians or candidates on how they plan to address citizens’ challenges, but this was largely missing
The quality of the stories suggests that community media was not sufficiently community or citizen-focused. Only 20% of the stories offered solutions, whereas ideally, all stories should have explored how political parties and candidates planned to tackle community issues.
To enhance the impact and effectiveness of community media in future elections, several recommendations are proposed:
- resource support, increased funding and capacity-building initiatives to expand coverage and improve reporting quality
- a focus on community issues to prioritise reporting on pressing concerns such as poverty, service delivery and education
- diverse source inclusion, to actively seek and include voices from the general public and underrepresented groups, particularly women
- training on fair reporting to reinforce unbiased and balanced reporting standards, and
- solutions-oriented journalism to encourage journalists to engage candidates on actionable solutions to community challenges
Read the full report here
