OUR IMPACT
Our Partners
Broadly, our partners are the media industry, oversight structures civil society and citizens. These can be stratified as follows:
- • Media industry: Independent Group, Times Media Group, The Citizen, Mail & Guardian, Media 24, Association of Independent Publishers (AIP), South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), e.TV and ANN7
- • Oversight structures: Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA), Broadcasting Complaints Commission of South Africa (BCCSA), Press Council, Department of Communications (DOC), Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Communications (PCC), Print and Digital Media South Africa (PDMSA), Digital Media & Marketing Association (DMMA) and South African National Editors’ Forum (SANEF)
- • Civil society organisations and media audiences: Institute for the Advancement of Journalism (IAJ), Freedom of Expression Institute (FXI), Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA), Wits University School of Journalism, and Audiences are those that are interested in media issues, and those who wish to acquire critical media literacy skills
Our Impact
Our impact cannot only be measured by what our partners say about us, but also by the usefulness of our work and how people engage with our work. The President and the Vice President of the Republic of South Africa have quoted our work on media-related issues. Not only government see the value of our work. Media from the public broadcaster, SABC, to other independent broadcasters, print and online newspapers and community radio regularly invite us to comment on critical media issues.
Our competitive advantage
Our competitive advantage is anchored on the following four values:
- • Consistency: We consistently provide quality research based on good practices
- • Independence: We are independent of government and media interests
- • Uniqueness: No one else does what we do with the same intentions and methodologies
- • Innovation: We use innovative, practical technologies to meet the ever-changing needs of our partners
Our Innovations
As one of the winners of the inaugural African News Innovation Challenge, we have been increasing the use of technology, as well as core elements of data mining and data journalism principles into our work. Through the following data tools (and additional ones currently under development, including the News Agenda on Twitter, Children and Media and Social Media Game), we aim to help improve media coverage and hold the powerful accountable.
Dexter
Dexter is the in-house tool that allows us to monitor media content and produce real-time results. It builds on our 21 years of media monitoring experience. The output of the tool can be seen in our presentation of the media coverage of South Africa’s 2014 general elections: elections2014.mediamonitoringafrica.org. We encourage you to interact with the results and share your views on the media coverage of these elections.
Wazimap
Wazimap is an interactive online information hub which provides easy access to information about elections and service delivery in South Africa. You can use Wazimap to enhance your stories with credible statistics about issues affecting the country. We developed Wazimap specifically to ‘disrupt” the way media historically covered elections and also with the idea of having it as a tool which users would go to beyond the elections period. What makes Wazimap special is that it acts as a starting point for anyone looking to write a story on key issues affecting South Africa. You can access Wazimap here: wazimap.co.za. Wazimap has been so successful to the extent that the African Media Initiative (AMI) is developing an equivalent for Kenya and Nigeria.
Newstools
NewsTools (Churnalism and NewsDiffs) are a suite of tools allowing media organisations to be better equipped to provide quality original news. Churnalism helps identify instances where media copy public relations content and present it as their own original content. It also identifies instances where media copy from each other. NewsDiffs tracks changes to online media stories. You can have a look at our NewsTools here: www.newstools.co.za. If you are interested in the tools, you can sign up to use our authentic news badge system.
Real411
Real411 is an online platform intended to address online harms, including mis- and disinformation, hate speech, harassment, and incitement to violence. It was launched in 2019 and serves as a publicly accessible platform that enables members of the public to report their concerns about different online harms. Real411 seeks to strike an appropriate balance between the right to freedom of expression, and the need to tackle harmful online content.
