Global Media Monitoring Project 2025
On May 8th, news stories from across Sweden were put under the equality microscope. As part of the Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP), volunteers, researchers and media professionals came together to analyse how men and women are represented in the news.
This global initiative, coordinated in Sweden by Fojo Media Institute, takes place every five years and is the world’s largest and longest-running research project on gender in news media. The Swedish coding (analysis), which takes place on a given day in May, received help from our partners at JMG (University of Gothenburg), the Swedish Gender Equality Agency and dedicated volunteers in Kalmar, Umeå, Lund and Gothenburg.
What exactly did we do?
We registered who gets to speak in the news, who’s quoted as an expert, who’s shown in images and what roles women and men are given in the stories. All of this helps build a detailed picture of gender equality in media, in Sweden and around the world.
Over 115 countries took part in the same type of registration and analyssi on the same day in May. Together with our partners in Ethiopia, Rwanda and Bangladesh and many more in countries across the world, we’re asking important questions of representation in the news:
- Who defines the news?
- Whose voices are heard?
- How far have we come since the last GMMP in 2020?
In 2020, Sweden scored better than most, with women making up 38% of people seen or heard in the news, compared to the global average of 25%. Will the 2025 results show progress or regress? We will find out this autumn.
This was the first year Fojo coordinated the Swedish effort (taking over from JMG) and we were very happy to be part of the global movement for more inclusive media, together with our partners in Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Rwanda.
Would you like to be part of the change? Stay tuned, the results will be released in the fall of 2025, when we will also be sharing what they mean for journalism in Sweden and beyond.
