Twenty years after the Windhoek Declaration on press freedom

Traditional radio, newspapers and
television remain <strong>the</strong> dominant
news delivery channels in elections
coverage, but online news is catching
up.
This is shown by <strong>the</strong> African
Elections Project that has operated
in 10 African elections to date, with
<strong>the</strong> aim of using new media for
more timely and relevant election
information and knowledge.
Since 2008, <strong>the</strong> project has been run
by <strong>the</strong> International Institute for ICT
Journalism (Penplusbytes) and it
has worked in Ghana, Mauritania,
Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia,
Botswana, Togo, Guinea, Niger
and Cote d’Ivoire. There are five
components to what happens in
each country’s election:
• training is given to senior
editors, journalists and reporters,
• an election guide for <strong>the</strong> media
is compiled,
• content is ga<strong>the</strong>red with SMS
and Twitter,
• a website portal is set up about
<strong>the</strong> particular poll,
Section 4: Access to Information
Elections coverage:
online news is spreading <strong>the</strong> message
By Jeremiah Sam
Jeremiah Sam works with
Penplusbytes as a Projects Director.
He is a senior journalist and a lead
researcher with <strong>the</strong> African Elections
Project. He has facilitated a number
of New Media training courses and
is a Fellow at www.audiencescapes.
org/
• media monitoring takes place,
with an early warning system
about problems.
The project recognises that online
elections coverage can exploit <strong>the</strong>
dissemination of mobile phones and
it can enable mashups which integrate
blogs, interactive maps and
social media. The changing face of
elections reporting in Africa includes
citizen media as an additional component
to news ga<strong>the</strong>ring.
Thanks to this, <strong>the</strong>re are new opportunities
for <strong>the</strong> mainstream media
in news development, especially
when professional journalists can’t
respond quickly or comprehensively
to news as it happens.
The earliest of <strong>the</strong>se tools is <strong>the</strong>
Ushahidi mashup that was utilised
in <strong>the</strong> Kenyan post-election crisis in
2009. It drew from emails and SMS
messages to give realtime news,
which was <strong>the</strong>n fused onto a map
to illustrate where violence was
occurring.
Mobile phones have had an impact
on how election reporting is being
practised. The SMS broadcasting
feature of <strong>the</strong> phones allows journalists
to send messages to multiple
mobile phones at <strong>the</strong> same time,
<strong>the</strong>reby contributing to <strong>the</strong> dissemination
of news snippets. This feature
was used in Namibia to provide upto-<strong>the</strong>-minute
information through
real-time, online upload and distribution
of information. Cell phones
were also used for verification of
voter registration. In Ghana’s 2008
presidential elections <strong>the</strong>y were important
in parallel vote tabulation.
In <strong>the</strong> newsrooms, in <strong>the</strong> countries
covered, journalists were provided
with mobile phones that enabled
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