Election media monitoring is on

The European Union (EU) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) kicked off election monitoring of the Georgian media, covering the entire cycle of the 2021 local elections – an election campaign, election day and a post-election period (from July 2021 through March 2022).

The EU-funded monitoring is implemented by UNDP in partnership with three civil society organizations: the Georgian Charter of Journalistic Ethics, Internews Georgia and CRRC-Georgia. This year, it covers 54 national and local media outlets, including:

• 14 television stations (5 national and 9 local)
• 12 radio stations (6 national and 6 local)
• 11 print newspapers (7 national and 4 local)
• 17 online editions (9 national and 8 local)

The monitoring will provide quantitative data and qualitative analysis to capture the main trends in election reporting. It will also look into the ways that Georgian media organizations connect with their readers on Facebook, analysing what kind of electoral news gets most of the social media outreach, including through the Facebook pages associated with political parties, officials and politicians.

A separate report prepared by CRRC-Georgia will examine how Georgian television stations are covering foreign influences on Georgian elections.

All reports will be available on the website: mediamonitor.ge