Media Analysis and Evaluation

In a 1966 lecture at the Kaufman Art Gallery in New York City, McLuhan said, “The medium is the massage, not the message. It really works us over; it really takes hold and massages the population in a savage way.”

Media evaluation and analysis is the first key step of PR measurement. It involves thorough research of media coverage given to your client and its impact on the publics thorough various methods.

In India, we do the study of media coverages by looking at the clip count of media found about your client, recording of your client news on broadcasting and searching for mentions of your client on the internet.The second part, i.e. studying the impact of the these coverages on the publics is an area which is not touched upon yet.I have been told by many that it is an expensive proposition.

So what about evaluating media coverage, lets for example take the print media.The ideal media coverage study would consist of the following parameters:- tone of the articles, bylines, headlines, length date of the appearance of articles, placement, graphs, photographs, financial figures and other art work.If need be if one has to get into the detail of analyzing an article in depth on how the content was written one can check for thematic analysis of the news report and recurrence, repetition and timeliness. 

AVE (Advertising Value Equivalent) and tone are the two parameters which are constantly only checked when analysing reports or mention of client names, it has been seen.

According to the Barcelona Principles for PR measurement http://www.instituteforpr.org/2010/06/the-barcelona-declaration-of-research-principles/ says two very important things among many others:-

Media measurment requires quantity and quality and that AVE are not the value of public relations.

So we undertsand that if media coverage is studied for all the above in detail one would know how the media is writing and percieving us.The beginners in the profession of public relations can get a cue about studying coverage of media from the above.

The idea is that if our works which results out of so much of hard work of pitching the media, if measured will result in understanding the value of our public relations work Was this really what you wanted the media to write? After all in case somebody is reading it, they better be reading what 'you' wanted them to read.

What do you think?