10 Years of Evaluation Practice in Media Assistance: Who, When, Why and How?

Evaluating the impact of media assistance is challenging for several reasons. Primary among them is that these kinds of initiatives operate in a complex political, social, and cultural environment. Although there has been increased attention to evaluation of media assistance, with a series of international conferences, funded research projects, and publications addressing this topic, it remains a problematic area of practice. This paper provides a survey of recent media assistance evaluation practices through an analysis of 47 evaluation documents of programs and projects from 2002–2012, identifying trends in methodology choices, and critiquing the quality of the evidence enabled through different evaluation approaches. It finds clear patterns in how, when and by whom evaluations are undertaken, but finds that these practices rarely generate useful, insightful evaluations.