Media and Democracy in Fragile States

Media and democracy in fragile states: the promises and problems of policy relevant research
by James Deane

"Earlier this month, we worked with the Institute of Development Studies in the UK to organize a research symposium on media and democracy in fragile states. The idea was to bring a small group of serious development thinkers and thinktanks from different disciplines together with some renowned media researchers - and practitioners like ourselves. Our aim was to discuss what a more serious and robust research agenda on media and democracy might look like. The focus was especially on developing countries where democracy and governance is fragile.

We called it a "research dialogue across disciplines" and it was conceived as a way of bringing together economists, governance researchers, sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists as well as media researchers to identify different perceptions and shared interests of this issue. We were somewhat blighted by illness but still had excellent participants including from the London School of Economics, Overseas Development Institute, IDS and the Department for International Development.

One reason for organizing the meeting with IDS was to test some perceptions we at the BBC World Service Trust had about the state of research about media in fragile states. We didn't know whether these were fair or not and wanted to find out..."

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