TBILISI. 6 July 2021 – The European Union (EU) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) kicked off election monitoring of the Georgian media covering the entire electoral cycle, including 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 Georgian 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 capturing major trends in election reporting. It will 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.

Television news will be monitored throughout the entire monitoring period, while talk-shows monitoring will start in August.

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

For information and interview requests, please contact:

In the EU and UNDP:

• Sophie Tchitchinadze, UNDP, +995 599 196907, sophie.tchitchinadze@undp.org
• Tamar Mikadze, EU Delegation to Georgia, +995 32 2943763, tamriko.mikadze@eeas.europa.eu

In civil society organizations:

• Nana Biganishvili, Georgian Charter of Journalistic Ethics, +995 597 001033, nanabigana@gmail.com
• Giorgi Jologua, Georgian Charter of Journalistic Ethics, +995 595 025140, gjologua@cu.edu.ge
• Eka Beridze, Internews-Georgia, +995 557 363056, eka@internews.ge
• Mariam Kobaladze, CRRC-Georgia, 599 407403, mariam.kobaladze@crrccenters.org

Dates:

July 2021 – March 2022

Media monitors:

• Georgian Charter of Journalistic Ethics – online media, social media, TV channels
• Internews-Georgia – press and radio
• CRRC-Georgia – foreign influence on elections 

National media outlets:

Local media outlets: