1. The document discusses metrics for measuring the impact of media and journalism. It notes the current obsession with impact metrics to justify investments and ensure accountability. 2. Major organizations like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are sponsoring projects to develop methodologies for defining and measuring media impact, especially for social causes. However, online engagement metrics are largely unsuitable for measuring impact because they only measure those already engaged. 3. True media impact is best measured by assessing changes in audiences' knowledge, awareness, understanding and perhaps opinions before and after exposure to media coverage. Quality journalism that attracts and keeps attention is more important than shares or likes.

1. 1
First Global Communications Meeting, 16 May 2014
Media Relations and Monitoring in the Run-up to 2015
Eric Karstens

2. The satisfied audience...
22
…is silent

3. 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
3

4. 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
4

5. Media impact metrics
5

6. Media impact metrics
6

7. Real-world metrics
ProPublica understanding of impact metrics:
Palpably changing the real world
 Mayors ousted
 Laws enacted
 Corruption revealed …
7

8. 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
8

9. 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
9

10. (Social) Media engagement
10
“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

11. 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 interests
or 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)
11

12. 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
12

13. COP16 Climate Conference in Cancun, 2010
 A „short-term, issue-specific transnational public sphere“
 „Networks of co-production“
 Shared workspace with „camp
feeling“: Journalists, PR pro-
fessionals, and politicians
pulled out of their usual routine
with bascially no choice but
to interact
 Journalists see NGOs „like a
compass“, putting delegation
information into context, pro-
viding story hooks and back-
ground explanations
 Direct spinning/correction
opportunity
13

14. 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“
14

15. 15
Thank you!
ek@karstens.eu

16. 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, 2013
http://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/
16