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A recent evaluation of El Kul (For Everyone) – a training project that aims to produce appealing, impartial, accurate and timely news for young Libyans via Facebook – found a high level of audience trust in El Kul’s output and revealed that its diverse content encouraged discussion, appealed to women and enabled users to learn about the cultures of people across Libya.
The project’s capacity-strengthening efforts were also found to have increased trainees’ soft and job-specific skills and their employment in the media sector.
Publication date: June 2017
The project
±«Óătv Media Action launched El Kul in February 2015 as a means of continuing its training and development work with Libyan media practitioners in the absence of a trusted broadcast partner within the country.
El Kul is aimed at Libyan youth who want to gain media skills and provide balanced, fair reporting on events and stories of interest to Libyans everywhere. Trainees are recruited directly in Libya, through advertising on Facebook and other networks such as universities’ media departments and Libyan media outlets. In total, ±«Óătv Media Action trained 67 trainees during 2016-2017, of which 37 (55%) were women.
As part of the implementation of the project, El Kul provides daily news on a dedicated Facebook page that aims to offer Libyans an accurate, timely and impartial source of information on key issues (e.g. the ongoing peace talks) at a crucial juncture in the country’s political transition. In addition, El Kul seeks to produce content that appeals to young audiences – such as sport, entertainment, arts and music.
Research approach
To evaluate the impact of the project’s capacity-strengthening element on trainees’ abilities, ±«Óătv Media Action commissioned an independent media consultant to assess trainees’ outputs before and after training. To further assess change in trainees’ skills, trainees completed self-assessment forms before and after training, scoring their job-specific and soft skills. In addition, 55 trainees who had finished training three or more months ago completed a follow-up survey. The consultant also interviewed: two trainees, three trainers, the El Kul social media manager and ±«Óătv Media Action’s Libya country director.
±«Óătv Media Action used a number of research methods to evaluate audiences’ perceptions of El Kul’s effectiveness. This included: an online survey of 195 users, in-depth telephone surveys of 30 users, and a female panel who were sent content once a month for four months.
Key findings
Audience engagement
- El Kul is engaged a large number of users, with an average of 97,000 engaged users a week
- Research participants had a high level of trust in El Kul’s output: 84% of online survey respondents reported that they trust the page as a source of credible and impartial information, and the majority of telephone interviewees stated that they would recommend El Kul to a friend
- El Kul compared favourably to other media, with users describing it as “trustworthy”, “unique” and “impartial”
- Users viewed El Kul’s content positively, reporting that El Kul was willing to address topics overlooked by other news sources and covered a variety of topics.