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The Index on International Media Freedom Support 2025

Martin Scott, Mel Bunce, Shannon Maguire, Mary Myers

Centre for Journalism and Democracy University of East Anglia; University of London City St George’s (2025), 30 pp.

"The Index on International Media Freedom Support (IMFS) evaluates and ranks states based on their support for media freedom beyond their borders. It does this by analysing the contributions that countries have made to international diplomatic, financial and safety / protection initiatives that prom ... ote media freedom. The IMFS Index includes all states that are members of both the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC) and the Media Freedom Coalition (MFC) (30 countries). These countries have pledged to promote media freedom internationally, and the IMFS holds them accountable for these commitments. The Index draws on data from the previous calendar year (2024), except for the ODA figures, which are for 2023, due to the time lag in reporting. The IMFS Index is produced by an independent research group and is a joint project between City St George’s, University of London, and the University of East Anglia. The results of the 2025 IMFS Index highlight several well performing states: Lithuania (1st) is the highest ranked country, largely due to its diplomatic efforts, including its leadership of two multilateral initiatives. Sweden (2nd) spent a far higher proportion of its Official Development Assistance (ODA) on media development in 2023 than any other country (0.91%). It is the only country to get close to the benchmark of 1.0%, as recommended by the Forum on Information & Democracy. France (5th) is the only country to award funding to all four qualifying multilateral pooled funds in 2024. Latvia (9th) is the only country to have both an active emergency visa scheme dedicated to supporting journalists at-risk and to support a national initiative that promotes the protection and safety of media workers in exile. The IMFS Index also identifies several less encouraging trends and performances: No country performed consistently well across all three areas of diplomacy, funding and safety / protection. Almost two thirds of the 30 countries qualified for the lowest, bronze category, earning only 10 points or less. This includes four members of the G7: the United Kingdom (equal 12th), the United States (equal 12th), Italy (equal 24th) and Japan (28th). The lowest ranked countries were Japan (28th), Slovenia (equal 29th) and South Korea (equal 29th), due to their relative lack of support for diplomacy, funding and safety / protection. However, South Korea and Japan do provide support for the wider enabling environment for media freedom in their ODA spending, which is not measured by this Index. On average, the 30 states in the IMFS Index allocated just 0.16% of their ODA to media development in 2023. Thirteen countries awarded less than 0.1%, including three – Latvia (9th), Greece (21st), and Slovenia (29th) – which reported giving 0%. Only five countries had an emergency visa scheme for journalists in 2024, and only five hosted an assistance programme for journalists in exile. Twenty-one countries had neither." (Executive summary, pages 3-4) more

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Whose Media Freedom is Being Defended? Norm Contestation in International Media Freedom Campaigns

Martin Scott, Mel Bunce, Mary Myers, Maria Carmen Fernandez

Journal of Communication, volume 73, issue 2 (2023), pp. 87-100

"This article analyses how international advocacy campaigns approach and define media freedom, and what influences this process. It does this through a two-year case study of the Media Freedom Coalition—an intergovernmental partnership of over 50 countries—that included 55 interviews with key st ... more

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Humanitarian Journalists: Covering Crises from a Boundary Zone

Martin Scott, Kate Wright, Mel Bunce

London; New York: Routledge (2023), xvi, 127 pp.

"Based on a 5-year study, involving over 150 in-depth interviews, this book examines the political, economic and social forces that sustain and influence humanitarian journalists. The authors argue that – by amplifying marginalised voices and providing critical, in-depth explanations of neglected ... more

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The Influence of News Coverage on Humanitarian Aid: The Bureaucrats’ Perspective

Martin Scott, Mel Bunce, Kate Wright

Journalism Studies, volume 23, issue 2 (2022), pp. 167-186

"We examine if and how news coverage influences governments’ humanitarian aid allocations, from the perspective of the senior bureaucrats involved in such decision-making. Using rare in-depth interviews with 30 directors and senior policymakers in 16 of the world’s largest donor countries, we fo ... more

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Reset Required? Evaluating the Media Freedom Coalition After its First Two Years

Mary Myers, Martin Scott, Mel Bunce, Lina Yassin, Maria Carmen Fernandez, Rachel Khan

University of East Anglia (UEA); City University of London; University of the Philippines-Diliman (2022), 69 pp.

"The purpose of this report is to evaluate the Media Freedom Coalition (MFC) in its first two years of operation, from 2019 to 2021. The MFC is a partnership of 50 countries working together to advocate for media freedom and the safety of journalists. Our independent report is based on over 100 inte ... more

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Routledge Handbook of Humanitarian Communication
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Lilie Chouliaraki, Anne Vestergaard (eds.)

Milton: Routledge (2022), 486 pp.

"Recent years have seen the expansion of critical scholarship on humanitarian communication across a range of academic fields, sharing recognition of the centrality of media and communications to our understanding of humanitarianism as an agent of transnational power, global governance and cosmopoli ... more

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Humanitarian Communication in a Post-Truth World

Mel Bunce

Journal of Humanitarian Affairs, volume 1, issue 1 (2021), pp. 49-55

"When people look online for information about humanitarian crises, they increasingly encounter media content that blurs the line between reality and fiction. This includes everything from rumour and exaggeration to partisan journalism and completely invented stories designed to look like real news ... more

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Beyond the ‘refugee Crisis’: How the UK News Media Represent Asylum Seekers Across National Boundaries

Glenda Cooper, Lindsey Blumell, Mel Bunce

International Communication Gazette, volume 83, issue 3 (2021), pp. 195-216

"Migration is one of the most pressing, divisive issues in global politics today, and media play a crucial role in how communities understand and respond. This study examines how UK newspapers (n=974) and popular news websites (n=1044) reported on asylum seekers throughout 2017. It contributes to pr ... more

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Shining a Spotlight on Media Freedom? Media Coverage of the Global Campaign for Media Freedom

Martin Scott, Mel Bunce, Mary Myers

City University of London; University of East Anglia (2020), 26 pp.

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Soft Power, Hard News: How Journalists at State-Funded Transnational Media Legitimize Their Work

Kate Wright, Martin Scott, Mel Bunce

International Journal of Press/Politics, volume 25, issue 4 (2020), pp. 607-631

"How do journalists working for different state-funded international news organizations legitimize their relationship to the governments which support them? In what circumstances might such journalists resist the diplomatic strategies of their funding states? We address these questions through a com ... more

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Humanitarian Journalism

Mel Bunce, Martin Scott, Kate Wright

In: Oxford Research Encyclopedias: Communication

Oxford: Oxford University Press (2019), 22 pp.

"Humanitarian journalism can be defined, very broadly, as the production of factual accounts about crises and issues that affect human welfare. This can be broken down into two broad approaches: “traditional” reporting about humanitarian crises and issues, and advocacy journalism that aims to im ... more

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Management and Resistance in the Digital Newsroom

Mel Bunce

Journalism, volume 20, issue 7 (2019), pp. 890–905

"What happens when there is conflict between the profit motivations of a news outlet and the professional values of its journalists? Questions of managerial influence and journalistic autonomy have interested media scholars from the seminal work of Warren Breed onwards. However, there have only been ... more

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Foundation Funding and the Boundaries of Journalism

Martin Scott, Mel Bunce, Kate Wright

Journalism Studies, volume 20, issue 14 (2019), pp. 2034-2052

"Private foundations are an important source of funding for many news outlets. It has even been suggested that they may offer a partial solution to journalism’s economic crisis. Yet we do not know how foundation funding shapes journalistic practice. In this article, we show that foundation funding ... more

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Foundation-Funded Journalism, Philanthrocapitalism and Tainted Donors

Kate Wright, Martin Scott, Mel Bunce

Journalism Studies, volume 20, issue 5 (2019), pp. 675-695

"Not-for-profit news organisations are increasingly funded by private foundations, supported by wealthy entrepreneurs. This raises a range of ethical dilemmas for journalists, which are particularly serious when their donors are alleged to have been involved in unethical or illegal activities. Altho ... more

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Foundation-Funded Journalism: The State of Research. Reading List

Martin Scott, Kate Wright, Mel Bunce

Humanitarian-journalism.net (2019), 6 pp.

"Research into foundation-funded journalism is relatively scarce and disconnected. There is, for example, no single edited volume on this topic. This matters because while philanthropists and foundations often want to support journalism, it is not always clear how they should do this. Similarly, jou ... more

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Foundation Support for International Non-Profit News: Mapping the Funding Landscape

Martin Scott, Kate Wright, Mel Bunce

Humanitarian-journalism.net; University of East Anglia (2018), 11 pp.

"There are three main reasons for the limited amount of foundation support for international journalism: a) It rarely aligns directly with the strategic priorities of a foundation (and so has to compete either with all other forms of journalism, or with numerous other ways of achieving the specific ... more

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The State of Humanitarian Journalism

Martin Scott, Kate Wright, Mel Bunce

Humanitarian-journalism.net; University of East Anglia (2018), 36 pp.

"Very few international news organisations routinely cover humanitarian affairs. Only 12 news outlets reported on all four of the humanitarian events we analysed in 2016. Because of the high costs of producing regular, original journalism on humanitarian issues, commercial news organisations do not ... more

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Communication in International Development: Doing Good or Looking Good?
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Florencia Enghel, Jessica Noske-Turner (eds.)

London; New York: Routledge (2018), xiv, 182 pp.

"International development stakeholders harness communication with two broad purposes: to do good, via communication for development and media assistance, and to communicate do-gooding, via public relations and information. This book unpacks various ways in which different efforts to do good are com ... more

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Africa's Media Image in the 21st Century: From the "Heart of Darkness" to "Africa Rising"
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Mel Bunce, Suzanne Franks, Chris Paterson (eds.)

London; New York: Routledge (2017), xvii, 239 pp.

"Africa’s Media Image in the 21st Century is the first book in over twenty years to examine the international media’s coverage of sub-Saharan Africa. It brings together leading researchers and prominent journalists to explore representation of the continent, and the production of that image, esp ... more

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Donor Power and the News: The Influence of Foundation Funding on International Public Service Journalism

Martin Scott, Mel Bunce, Kate Wright

International Journal of Press/Politics, volume 22, issue 2 (2017), pp. 163-184

"How does donor funding affect the independence, role perceptions, and ideology of the journalism it supports? We begin to answer this increasingly important but underresearched question with a year-long case study of the humanitarian news organisation IRIN as it transitioned from being funded by th ... more

Routledge Handbook of Humanitarian Communication Top Insights

Communication in International Development: Doing Good or Looking Good? Top Insights

Africa's Media Image in the 21st Century: From the "Heart of Darkness" to "Africa Rising" Top Insights

Routledge Handbook of Humanitarian Communication
Top Insights

Communication in International Development: Doing Good or Looking Good?
Top Insights

Africa's Media Image in the 21st Century: From the "Heart of Darkness" to "Africa Rising"
Top Insights