Media Monitoring Africa (MMA) is monitoring selected media’s coverage of the run up to the 2021 Local Government Elections (LGE) to determine what issues are considered a priority by the media, check whether political parties and/or their candidates are represented fairly and without bias and, whether there is an equitable representation of the different racial and gender groups, among other things. More in-depth analyses will be written on these findings every month and at the end of the election monitoring period, an overall report will be compiled.

Below is a brief analysis to show what and who dominated media coverage from the 27th of September to the 3rd of October, 2021. A total of 529 stories on elections were recorded in this monitoring period, 17 more from the 546 stories recorded in the previous week. The gradual increase in elections stories is typical of media trends at this time.