Local journalists urged to take part in survey |19 May 2022
Ms Henderson (left) and Ms Klymenko giving details of the survey (Photo: Louis Toussaint)
Local journalists, freelance media practitioners, part time news readers are being called upon to take part in the ‘Worlds of Journalism Study (WJS) https://worldsofjournalism.org/’ survey in collaboration with the Seychelles Media Commission and the Education and Socio-Economic Research Institute within the University of Seychelles.
This is the third time the survey is being conducted and Seychelles has been included in the Worlds of Journalism Study (WJS) https://worldsofjournalism.org/‒ one of the biggest collaborative research projects in the field of journalism‒ for the first time.
This was announced by Tessa Henderson, media secretary at the Seychelles Media Commission and Dr Olga Klymenko, head of the Diploma in Journalism programme.
It is a representative survey of journalists in 120+ countries, involving 30,000+ interviews of journalists, and the first survey of a kind implemented in Seychelles.
The Seychelles Media Commission (SMC) has so far assisted by identifying the survey segment and circulation of the link. The survey questions cover the following areas:employment status; income; work experience; affiliation to unions; roles and editorial powers/freedom; ethical issues; safety and protection of self; stress in the workplace; sources of influence; personal values; area of specialty; hours of work; format; technology and education
“When we did a local survey about the media houses, there were about 85 media practitioners working for 11 different media houses. We have extended the survey to newsreaders and presenters. Usually a survey costs a lot and with this one we were able to add some questions and review some of the questions as they did not relate to Seychelles. And these questions are being asked to journalists around the world,” explained Ms Henderson.
She added that this survey will also help to know the situation journalists work in.
Dr Klymenko, representing the Education and Socio-Economic Research Institute at the University of Seychelles (UniSey) noted that research as a concept is vital for any society.
“In many cases decisions are taken based on perceptions or some random facts. We were approached by a scholar from USA doing his PhD and he was doing this research and decided to include us in that process. The report after this survey will address issues that affect journalism as a sector in Seychelles such as ethics. It will also help to benchmark these problems that are available in Seychelles to relate with problems of the same kind internationally. Such benchmarking will help find solutions.”
Dr Klymenko said the reports will be published in a journal on research in media studies and will be available to the world, thus promoting and giving visibility to Seychelles. This will have some implications where there will be more collaboration.
The survey is being carried out here in Seychelles during this month of May and the deadline is Friday May 20.
The basic idea behind the Worlds of Journalism Study (WJS) is to administer the same survey to journalists across the world and across time (WJS1 surveys were administered between 2007-2011; WJS2 was 2012-2016; and we will be collecting the data for WJS3, which is taking place between 2021-2023). This allows researchers to make country-by-country comparisons and to see how the state of journalism in each country has changed over time.
Vidya Gappy