Media and Election Monitoring in Africa: Evolving Mechanisms for the 2016 and 2020 Elections in Ghana

The media continues to shape societies and culture through their series of activities revolving around educating and informing citizens as well as entertaining them. It has been instrumental in influencing the political system in several ways to improve the general conditions under which the state is governed and how power is exercised. The role of the media in enhancing the democratic maturity of states and institutional growth has been on the ascendency in practice and in the literature. Deploying the watchdog role theory, this study examines the role of the media in the democratisation processes of states, with a special emphasis on how they monitor general elections. The study uses the specific case of Ghana, drawing on the 2016 and 2020 general elections to examine the avenues and processes for election monitoring as well as its implications for elections. The case study design is deployed using both primary and secondary data sources. The study observes an evolving array of mechanisms deployed by the media to monitor elections which help in providing real-time information to the electorate, and help in fact-checking to prevent misinformation and disinformation from political parties on election outcomes.