Covering the full calendar year 2025, the study draws on three complementary methods: media monitoring of more than 1,600 coded articles across 41 outlets, including online media, print newspapers, and the web editions of television stations; requests for information sent to all 61 municipal councils on the internal rules they have adopted for communicating with the public and the media; and semi-structured interviews with council members from municipalities of different sizes, political affiliations, and regions. Together, these methods make it possible to examine not only how much coverage councils receive, but also which councils and topics become visible, whose voices define that coverage, and how council members experience their own relationship with the media.
The findings show that media coverage of municipal councils is limited, episodic, and concentrated in a handful of councils and a narrow set of topics, with attention driven almost entirely by national political drama, judicial proceedings, and electoral processes. The substantive work of local governance — budgets, public consultations, and service delivery — receives very little attention, while mayors dominate as the primary voice and council members, residents, and civil society appear far less often. Women councillors, in particular, are markedly underrepresented, despite holding a significant share of council seats.
The interviews reinforce this picture, with council members describing the media as largely indifferent to their work and pointing to political and economic pressures, a lack of incentives to speak out, and the absence of training and support as barriers to engagement. At the institutional level, the formal rules meant to govern councils’ communication with the public often exist largely on paper, and the supporting documentation is frequently incomplete or impossible to verify.
Beyond mapping these patterns, the report offers evidence-based insights for journalists, civil society organisations, local officials, and researchers, providing concrete data on how local governance is represented — and overlooked — in Albanian media, as well as on the structural factors that keep municipal councils at the margins of public debate. These findings can inform local reporting, media monitoring, and advocacy on transparency, citizen participation, and gender equality.
This report was published as part of the project “Evidence-Based Monitoring of Local Public Spending during Electoral Processes”, funded by the European Union and implemented by Qëndresa Qytetare in partnership with BIRN Albania.
For an English copy of the report click here.
For an Albanian copy of the report click here.