Assessing impact in global media: methods, innovations, and challenges

International broadcasting, defined as “the use of electronic media by one society to shape the opinion people and leaders another,” is an area public diplomacy research ripe for scholarly attention (Price in Media sovereignty: global information revolution its challenge state power, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2002). The primary agent U.S. international broadcasting Agency Global (USAGM), which operates 62 languages over 100 countries. While there broad consensus literature that evaluation extremely difficult, USAGM has a unique assessing impact across such diverse geography audiences environments. Moreover, independent service agency, often called upon show it responsible steward resources demonstrating effectiveness programs policymakers key stakeholders (Metzgar Seventy years Smith-Mundt Act broadcasting: Back future? CPD perspectives diplomacy, 2018). This paper describes assesses USAGM’s Impact Model, serves conceptual framework aggregating, understanding, communicating Agency’s research. It illustrates research-strategy-evaluation loop examining case Voice America Democratic Republic Congo, discusses some challenges faces both well implementation recommendations proposed based on