DHAKA: Democracy International (DI) launched a media monitoring portal as a research tool for civil society, political parties, and other stakeholders to capture the nature of print and electronic coverage of important personalities and issues in Bangladesh.

The media monitoring portal is a web based data capturing, processing and reporting system developed under DI’s Democratic Participation and Reform project (DPR), said a press release on Monday.

The portal monitors 10 key issues, 10 key institutions and 10 key personalities and covers nationwide five national newspapers, six television news programs and two internet news portals.

The media outlets, issues and personalities were chosen because they had highest audience interest and penetration based on DI’s public opinion surveys, it added.

Following three months of continuous monitoring, DI has opened the web portal to stakeholders and provided guidance how to use the portal and benefit from the data.

To date, over 8,000 news stories have been captured and analyzed through the system.  Interested parties can access the media monitoring portal at: http://www.di-bangladesh.com/mediamonitoring/

Addressing the launching ceremony, DPR’s Chief of Party, David Dettman, said, “The media monitoring portal will provide political parties and civil society organizations a new and innovative way to track media coverage on important issues and personalities in Bangladesh.”

He added: “It is important for stakeholders to understand both public opinion, through survey research, and the nature of media coverage, through the media monitoring portal. We’re excited to offer this tool to help advance understanding in Bangladesh.”

Democracy International (DI) is a Washington, DC based organization implementing Democratic Participation and Reform, a five-year long democracy and governance project funded jointly by USAID and UKaid, has three objectives: to increase grassroots participation, enhance information access and utilization, and improve the environment for responsive politics.

BDST: 1640 HRS, DEC 09, 2013