media monitoring project afghanistan

it was an extreme pleasure today to visit the headquarters of the media monitoring project afghanistan. an initiative of the independent election commission, this group has been doing off-air taping of radio and television broadcasts throughout afghanistan since june.



mmpa records several hours of presidential and provincial electoral content from around 20 independent and state-owned broadcasters each day and then indexes that material based on the candidate being covered; whether the reporting was negative, positive, or neutral; the topics addressed; etc.

through this labor, the organization is constructing an comprehensive audio/visual archive not only documenting the contentious afghan presidential election but also a particular slice in time in the development of independent media across the nation.



mmpa boasts that it is leading one of the only quantitative data-gathering projects in afghanistan that does not have an obvious military aim. the group produces weekly reports for the independent election commission (for distribution to the media) detailing trends in coverage, public opinion, etc. based on analysis of the footage.

material is recorded throughout the country and sent on a weekly basis via truck from the provinces to kabul. surprisingly, all of the tapes have shown up and nothing has been lost, even though the couriers put themselves at great risk when traveling certain routes.



as you can see, there is no media monitoring going on in helmand province. as one person remarked, "that is no surprise, considering there was no real election in helmand."

the amazing media monitoring project afghanistan archive may be coming to acku, and i am helping them determine how best to digitize and index the 12-16,000 hours of content, which is a source of great excitement to me.



so much here is unclear! i read a badly translated version of afghanistan's first copyright law (2008) in an attempt to assess today the perspective the state takes on the rights of libraries and archives to acquire, preserve, make accessible audio/visual content so that i could recommend a suitable course of action to acku. egads!

the conundrum that is kabul university

a vision nearly california-like in tree-splendor is that of the kabul university campus. while a few buildings suffered bombing damage during the wars, the bulk of the campus has been preserved. trees seventy years old + older are everywhere, a welcome presence in dusty, destroyed kabul.



kabul university is divided into many different faculties, + each faculty has its own library. most of the libraries are ridiculously under-resourced, + there is no coordination amongst them.



we were kindly welcomed into the libraries of the english department, the engineering department, the legal training center, the sharia (islamic) law faculty, the medical university, the central library, and the afghanistan center of kabul university.

i took lots of photos of books.



strange, strange collections.



the afghanistan center has some unbelievable political posters + cartoons. acku is doing the best of any of the libraries at kabul university, primarily because its founder is the "grandmother of afghanistan," nancy hatch dupree.

["the hijab is my protection"--mujaheddin era]

["the man with two faces" (the face he presents to the people + the face behind the face) -- soviet era -- enlarge to see to whom they refer!]

the campus has about 8,000 students, but there has been a mass exodus of qualified faculty. only a few professors have master's-level educations. the university is free + many parents send their kids there, full of hope. and the students turn up + seem to be working hard.

just like the american university kids, ku students are extraordinarily charming + friendly. this aspiring engineer wanted to know why i would take photos of trees when i could be photographing him.



an apt point!

kabul university used to be a respected institution, but, like so many here, it has experienced such great loss--loss of funding, loss of faculty, loss of tradition. the institution is known for its political activism, some of which is of the highly conservative variety. it is hard to predict what will happen at ku, but again, a real privilege to see it for myself.