Media and Elections modular workshop in Ukraine

The workshop was conducted in Kyiv, Ukraine, on October 23-25, 2018 and hosted by the joint IFES-CEC Administrative Center for the Training of Election Process Participants. The workshop was facilitated by three BRIDGE workshop-level facilitators Alyona Sheshenia. Anastasiia Matvienko and Yevheniia Pavlovska.

This workshop assembled 26 (9 men; 17 women) representatives of media, CEC Secretariat, and academia to discuss media reporting during the election campaign period and cooperation between election management bodies (EMBs) and journalists to ensure more effective public outreach. Given the important role of media in the upcoming elections, IFES in partnership with Internews Ukraine succeeded to involve 12 chief editors from regional printed and online media to participate in the workshop. Recently appointed CEC member – Yevhen Radchenko – participated in the event as guest speaker and shared remarks on various aspects of CEC’ cooperation with media in the Q&A format..

The workshop main objectives were to encourage a professional and productive relationship between EMBs and the Media; to understand the role of the Media throughout the electoral cycle; to identify regulatory frameworks that can be applied to the Media and to explore strategies for improving EMB communication with the electoral stakeholders by working with the media.

The workshop engaged participants on various topics. All sessions were highly interactive and enabled the participants to discuss the various issues on the role of media throughout electoral cycle, the main freedoms of the media stemming from the international electoral obligations, networking and building mutual expectations between electoral stakeholders. One of the topics – regulating the use of social media during the elections – appeared to be discussed with the huge interest.

Participants throughout the workshop have expressed interest and actively engaged in all the activities. Participants have praised the workshop methodology and the professionalism of the facilitation team. They have shared some observations at the end of the workshop:

All the stakeholders have positively assessed holding the mixed group workshop; one of them said: “I have witnessed one of the main objectives of BRIDGE program – “bridging” between the stakeholders: Media with Political Parties, CEC and NGOs”.

Participants have appreciated the sessions where they had opportunity to accomplish the activities from the perspective of different stakeholders.

At the end, all the participants have received certificates in recognition of completion of 3-day Media and Elections workshop.