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First Global Communications Meeting, 16 May 2014

Media Relations and Monitoring in the Run-up to 2015Eric Karstens

The satisfied audience...

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…is silent

Metrics everywhere

Across the board, we currently have an obsession with impact metrics.

Rationales:

Each dollar spent on media is a dollar not spent on vaccines, clean water, sanitation, etc.

Accountability and need to justify investments

Apparent blanket availablity of measurements for anything and everything

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Media impact metrics

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Knight Foundation are sponsoring the „Media Impact Project“ at USC Annenberg to the tune of $3.25m for 2.5 years

Central and focused methodology development and critique

Charts and manuals how to define, achieve, and measure media impact, in particular when it comes to social causes or development

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Media impact metrics

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Media impact metrics

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Real-world metrics

ProPublica understanding of impact metrics:

Palpably changing the real world

Mayors ousted

Laws enacted

Corruption revealed …

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Media and real-world impact

Does this mean reducing journalism and media to activist tools?

„Your parents donate money, you send a Tweet.“

Internet activist Sascha Lobo at Re:Publica 2014

„The public good is not identical with the aggregated intentions of organised interest“

„Quality does not emerge from the aggregation of diverging interests, but from keeping open divergence“

German Constitutional Court, 2014

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A changing public

Is an informed public is by definition also a proactive public?

Could it be that we are faced with a different generation of audience that‘s weary of organisations? Choice and fragmentation may have lowered the willingness of individuals to cope with organised interest and activism

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(Social) Media engagement

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“The people who share content are a small fraction of the people who visit that content. Among articles we tracked with social activity, there were only one tweet and eight Facebook likes for every 100 visitors.

There is no relationship whatsoever between the amount a piece of content is shared and the amount of attention an average reader will give that content.”

Tony Haile, CEO, Chartbeat

Engagement metrics

Online engagement metrics are largely unsuitable, because

you preach to the already converted

you measure people who are activists/„meddlers“ to begin with

Social media posts often make a public statement about interestsor current preoccupations, rather than being a genuine recommendation

„Dark social“ makes up for 50-80% of traffic on popular media websites

But:

People who spend more time reading are more likely to return (TTR)

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The inverted pyramid of media impact

When it comes to impact, the best measurement is the before-and-after differential in knowledge, awareness, understanding,and – perhaps – opinion

How to get there?

Change, or at least further develop, people‘s minds

To this end, produce coverage that attracts and keeps earnest attention

To this end, support quality journalism with the appropriate narrative and style

To this end, engage journalists (and their editors) first

To this end, create interesting, compelling, engaging situations for journalists

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COP16 Climate Conference in Cancun, 2010

A „short-term, issue-specific transnational public sphere“

„Networks of co-production“

Shared workspace with „campfeeling“: Journalists, PR pro-fessionals, and politicianspulled out of their usual routinewith bascially no choice butto interact

Journalists see NGOs „like acompass“, putting delegationinformation into context, pro-viding story hooks and back-ground explanations

Direct spinning/correctionopportunity

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Quality-conscious and sustainable media relations

Make sure to create an event/setting that embraces divergence, even if this appears to be contrary to your own communication interest

Foster interdisciplinary cooperation and co-production in an unobtrusive fashion

Build lasting relationships with journalists even if at first they do not seem to produce coverage, let them experience a process

Systematically put journalists and stakeholders from different countries in a room to break up “national containers”

Leverage the transnational communications role of news agency journalists

Enable journalism in the first place: e.g., BMGF-supported grants programme „Innovation in Development Reporting“, stipends, exchanges, internships, „embedding“

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Thank you!ek@karstens.eu

Selected references

Manuel Adolphsen, Julia Lück: Non-Routine Interactions Behind the Scenes of a Global Media Event. In: Medien & Kommunikations-wissenschaft, Sonderband 2, Baden-Baden 2012, p. 141-158

Richard J. Tofel: Non-profit journalism – Issues around impact: A white paper from ProPublica, 2013http://s3.amazonaws.com/propublica/assets/about/LFA_ProPublica-white-paper_2.1.pdf

LFA Group: Learning for Action/Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation/John S. and James L. Knight Foundation: Deepening Engagement for Lasting Impact: Measuring Media Performance and Results, 2013-14(forthcoming)

Tony Haile: What You Think You Know About the Web Is Wrong, 2014 http://time.com/12933/what-you-think-you-know-about-the-web-is-wrong/

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