As part of the evaluation, the team undertook a classification of all 23 interventions undertaken by IMS by the time of the inception of the evaluation, in February 2003.
The full information has been kept in electronic form. However, to the extent the information can be quantified, we have compiled statistics on some of the variables in the data set.12 Below are our findings.
About half of the projects (12) have been initiated by IMS. Other media organisations, international or domestic, have initiated the other projects, and at some stage included IMS in the planning and implementation process. This shows IMS to be quite proactive in its way of working.
Close to 50 per cent of the projects are located in Africa (11). One fifth of the projects are located in Asia (5), a few in Europe (3) and the Middle East (3). Also the Americas (South America and the Caribbean) are represented, with one project in each of the regions. Clearly Africa is the dominant region in terms of interventions, which is also borne out by statistics on aid flows from Denmark and other Scandinavian countries and the number of conflicts on the continent.
Approximately 90 per cent of the cases are reported to be troubled by media oppression or security threats to journalists, in most cases a combination of both problems. Censorship, financial constraints and restricted access to information are other challenges faced by the media institutions. Clearly media oppression is a very significant cause for IMS interventions.
The countries/regions are sub-divided into three stages of a problem, pre-conflict, manifest conflict and post-conflict, using IMS criteria.13 All three stages of problem are represented in the data, with manifest conflict (10) as the modal category. Six (6) countries or regions are reported to be in the pre-conflict phase and eight (8) in the post-conflict phase. Several cases are difficult to accurately place in the conflict or post-conflict category because the intervention may cover a time span in which the overall situation changes. In other cases, like the Horn of Africa, the countries included entail both manifest conflict and post-conflict. In other words, only 25 per cent of cases represent the potential conflict phase, which implies that the possibility
12There were some problems in the classification exercise due to the fact that in one case IMS operates with a region, Horn of Africa, as both an entity and as interventions in three different countries, Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan. In another case a region is referred to as entity for intervention and not as separate countries, Central Asia. Thus The Horn of Africa is not included in the classification exercise, while Central Asia is.
13 As we have pointed out in Section 2, we are not happy with the classification of conflict in a linear three-stage model. We would have preferred a classification that was multidimensional that we have also suggested. However, as IMS utilised the three-stage model we have used this in our classification exercise. But we have also inserted the interventions in the two-by-two and the three-by-three table
of de-escalating conflict has only been tested out in relatively few cases. Clearly, IMS acts when the conflict is overt or is headed towards resolution.
The type of medium supported is mostly the private print and TV/radio.14 In a few cases also government owned media receive or are planned to receive support.
Online media are also included in the interventions (Burma and Colombia). As could be expected, private media dominate, as they are more vulnerable to oppression than state media.
In all cases the target of the IMS activity is journalists and other media workers. A few interventions also focus on the readers and public at large.
The modes of intervention most frequently applied are assessment (12) and training (12), followed by organisational support (10) and content transformation (9), monitoring (8), direct/indirect funding to a media outlet (8) and safety (8). The remaining modes of intervention are only applied in 10 – 15 per cent of the cases.
Training is clearly the most common type of intervention, which is not unexpected.
Two dimensions of the data, stage of problem and type of intervention, offer an opportunity for cross tabulation and further analysis.
The two most applied interventions, assessment and training, are both primarily applied in the manifest conflict and post-conflict phases, 10 and 11 (out of 12) cases, respectively. The 10 instances of organisational support are more equally distributed on the stages of conflict variable, with 4 in the in pre-conflict and 3 each in the manifest conflict and post-conflict stages.
Content transformation is predominantly applied in the manifest conflict stage.
Interventions entailing safety training are likewise mostly applied in the manifest conflict stage. This again underlines our observation that these types of intervention are used when the conflict is all too apparent. Both assessment and content transformation may be instruments for heading off potential full-blown conflict by timely interventions, but the data, though limited, seem to tell us that these interventions occur too late in general for deescalating the conflict, e.g. Ivory Coast.
Monitoring and direct/indirect funding interventions are spread over all the stages of the conflict.
Finally, we have compiled data on cases where (a) other organisations have taken over IMS initial interventions (at least 10 out of 24) and (b) IMS has followed up with a second intervention (at least 7 out of 24). We do think that 10/24 is a very good achievement in terms of IMS objectives.
Below are the results of our assessments when we fill in the two tables discussed in section 2.2 with the concrete IMS operations.
14 In the classification schemes digital media and new information systems are classified as electronic media.
Conflict Media
Threat
Armed conflict Not armed conflict
Media threatened Iraq
Table 3 IMS interventions by media threat and armed conflict
Stage of
Table 4 IMS interventions by degree of media threat and stage of conflict
Based on budget data, we have noted that in eight of our 23 interventions, there was expenditure well beyond the DKK 200.000 (approximately USD27.500) ceiling:
Afghanistan 69.913 Sri Lanka 31.474 Nepal 50.025 Middle East 38.652 Sierra Leone 37.147 Liberia 31.694 Sudan 33.296 Central Asia 49.149
This would seem to indicate that budgets ceilings in general are too low when actual expenditure is higher in one-third of all interventions.
Findings in Relation to the Project Portfolio
• Sometimes IMS seems to be engaged countries, which may be characterised as very high profile and thus often also targeted by other organisations and initiatives (Nepal, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Israel/Palestine, Chechnya). It is a factor that always should be assessed in relation to where to intervene. But it is also important to bear in mind that the form of support that IMS provides is often not of a high profile character.
• IMS is willing to take risks, and be experimental and creative. This is a great asset.
• In the documents on the different interventions it is in many cases not possible to find out where the idea for intervention originated.
• In the Sri Lankan case, the reason for intervention is not media threat as such, but specific aspects of the post-conflict situation, related to content transformation. It is the only case of an intervention where the media is not threatened.