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State of digital development and trends in the CIS region: Challenges and opportunities

Geneva: ITU (2025), iv, 47 pp.

"This publication offers a comprehensive overview of digital development in the CIS region. The data reveal a region where nine in ten people are online—well above the global average—and where mobile broadband networks now cover virtually the entire population. These are important milestones. At ... more

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Journalism under Duress: Worlds of Journalism Study Report (Wave 3: 2021–2025)
Deep Insights

Thomas Hanitzsch, Folker Hanusch, Corinna Lauerer, Vera Slavtcheva-Petkova (eds.)

Munich: Ludwig-Maximilian Universität (LMU), WJS Center (2025), 371 pp.

"This report presents findings from the third wave of the Worlds of Journalism Study (WJS3), conducted between 2021 and 2025. In this iteration, we focused on journalists’ perceptions of risk and uncertainty in their profession and sought to identify key factors that shape how journalists navigate ... more

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Vibrant Information Barometer: Europe & Eurasia
Deep Insights

Washington, DC: IREX; USAID (2024), 357 pp.

"The 2024 Europe and Eurasia Vibrant Information Barometer (VIBE) covers 18 countries throughout Europe, Eurasia, and Central Asia. With VIBE, IREX strives to capture a modern and evolving media space where people are simultaneously producers, transmitters, consumers, and actors in the information t ... more

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Central Asia Media Program: Final Report

Dmitri Surnin, Dylan Gray

USAID; Internews (2024), 158 pp.

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Vibrant Information Barometer: Europe & Eurasia
Deep Insights

Washington, DC: IREX; USAID (2023), 355 pp.

"The 2023 Europe and Eurasia Vibrant Information Barometer (VIBE) covers 18 countries throughout Europe, Eurasia, and Central Asia. With VIBE, IREX strives to capture a modern and evolving media space where people are simultaneously producers, transmitters, consumers, and actors in the information t ... hat influences their lives and environments. This year’s edition focuses on the media and information space across the countries in the study during calendar year 2022, capturing the impact of the Kremlin’s February full-scale invasion of Ukraine. VIBE looks at four principles of information vibrancy: Principle 1: Information Quality; Principle 2: Multiple Channels: How Information Flows; Principle 3: Information Consumption and Engagement; Principle 4: Transformative Action: How Information Drives Behavior. VIBE includes 20 indicators that capture the most important elements of these four principles, and it relies on information from country experts who complete a VIBE questionnaire, provide scores for sub-indicators that support each of the 20 main indicators along with evidence to justify their scores, and then contribute to a panel discussion led by a moderator [...] For countries in Europe and Eurasia (E&E) included in this year’s publication, country-level scores were, again, mainly split into two VIBE classifications: Somewhat Vibrant (North Macedonia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Armenia, Moldova, and Ukraine) and Slightly Vibrant (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Russia, and Serbia). Azerbaijan and Belarus held the lowest scores in E&E, putting them in the Not Vibrant classification. In Central Asia, this year’s study put Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan in the Slightly Vibrant category. Turkmenistan’s score of 1 put it in the Not Vibrant classification. At the overall score level, some countries--including Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ukraine, and Moldova—saw increases in their scores. Others such as Serbia, North Macedonia, Kosovo, and Montenegro received the same country-level scores as they did in the 2022 VIBE study. Finally, other countries—including Albania, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, and Russia—experienced a decline in their country-level scores. Principle 1’s (Information Quality) lowest scores tended to fall in the indicator examining insufficient resources for content production and harmful information. Rapidly evolving models for financing media, declining advertising in traditional print and broadcast media, international tech giants siphoning off advertising funds, and local and global inflationary pressures, have all contributed to a financing desert for media. Many media are reliant on political or business benefactors for livelihood, while others look to international funding agencies for their survival." (Executive summary, page 7) more

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The Unfreedom Monitor: Kazakhstan Country Report

Sofya du Boulay

Amsterdam: Global Voices Advox (2023), 21 pp.

"This report focuses on the main trends in digital authoritarian technologies used in Kazakhstan from 2017 to 2022. It contextualises the repressive online mechanisms within the changing political landscape. The January 2022 protests tested the grounds of social and political liberties — the seemi ... more

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Internet Censorship in Kazakhstan: Extensive But Unnecessary

ConnexUs (2023), 5 pp.

"An increasing number of states resort to various tools to control the dissemination of information on the internet. The government of Kazakhstan has also become adept at employing censorship methods to silence alternative voices and prevent the public from seeing undesirable critical content. Yet s ... more

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Mapping the Media and Communication Landscape of Central Asia: An Anthology of Emerging and Contemporary Issues

Elira Turdubaeva, Evangelia Papoutsaki (eds.)

Lexington Books (2023), xiii, 365 pp.

"Central Asian post-independence media and communication industries, professional practices, education, persisting and evolving values, and traditions remain critically understudied with a notable scarcity of research and scholarly publications on the complex and increasingly changing communicative ... more

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Central Asian Media Consumption and Disinformation: A Quantitative and Qualitative Assessment in the Context of Geo-Politics

Samuel Doveri Vesterbye, Shairbek Dzhuraev, Andreas Marazis

Internews; European Neighbourhood Council (ENC) (2023), 62 pp.

"This report presents a rapid media consumption assessment in Central Asia. It tells the reader what information - and disinformation - Central Asians consume, as well as the reasons why they consume it. How do recent international and regional geo-political events impact their media choices and wha ... more

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Solidarity Through Cynicism? The Influence of Russian Conspiracy Narratives Abroad

Scott Radnitz

International Studies Quarterly, issue 66, sqac012 (2022), 14 pp.

"As conspiracy theories have become a popular form of political discourse worldwide, states have promoted conspiratorial ideas to advance their foreign policy goals. Yet, despite recent attention to the spread of propaganda abroad, scholars have not addressed whether and how conspiracy theories spre ... more

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Vibrant Information Barometer: Europe & Eurasia
Deep Insights

Washington, DC: IREX (2022), 348 pp.

"The 2022 Europe and Eurasia Vibrant Information Barometer (VIBE) sees the addition of the five countries of Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) to the study, bringing the total number of countries examined to 18. With VIBE, IREX strives to capture a moder ... more

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Photographing Central Asia: From the Periphery of the Russian Empire to Global Presence

Svetlana Gorshenina, Sergei Abashin, Bruno De Cordier, Tatiana Saburova (eds.)

Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter (2022), viii, 431 pp.

"The aim of this volume is to interpret photography as a specific tool that reifies reality, subjectively frames it, and fits it into various political, ideological, commercial, scientific, and artistic contexts. Without reducing the entire argument to the binary of ‘photography and power’, the ... more

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Kazakhstan’s Bloody January: Digital Repression on the “New Silk Road”

Raushan Zhandayeva, Rachael Rosenberg

Tokyo: Toda Peace Institute (2022), 24 pp.

"In January 2022, Kazakhstan’s government shut down internet access for several days while enacting a violent crackdown on initially peaceful protests triggered by hikes in fuel prices. This policy brief examines Kazakhstan’s internet and media landscape, the (re)actions of civil society and the ... more

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Radicalism Online: An Analysis of the Meanings, Ideas, and Values of Violent Extremism in Central Asia

Bishkek: Internews; Centre for Religious Studies of Kyrgyzstan (2021), 136 pp.

"In an effort to help prevent violent extremism in Central Asia, the Research Centre for Religious Studies of Kyrgyzstan conducted an analysis of values, narratives, and online messages created and distributed by banned extremist groups in five countries: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmeni ... stan, and Uzbekistan. The study included over 1.6 million messages containing religious rhetoric and provides insight into the meanings of the messages and the channels for dissemination, as well as the impact of the messages on the target audience. This was followed by a field study of 4,005 respondents in the 18-35 age range. In addition, the survey also sought to identify the media preferences of young people in the region. Using the findings, the Centre developed communication strategies for each country that recommended how media, NGOs, state authorities, and religious leaders could, with a focus on young people, contribute to promoting peace. Although less than 1% of the analyzed messages containing religious rhetoric had what would be considered dangerous content, those particular messages often resonated with users’ values and interests, especially young people. The messages promoting violence used specific, complex terms that were geared to people who were already followers of radical ideas rather than the average user. The intent of the messages was to deepen the commitment of followers rather than recruit new followers. Administrators of violent extremist channels have developed multi-channel access strategies for potential recipients (through various platforms, chat rooms, personal messages, and reposts), thwarting the blocking measures used by Central Asian governments. The messaging by extremist groups promotes: purity of faith, mutual support to fellow believers, fighting against infidels and apostates, rejection of secular power and its decisions, ambition to create a caliphate, and anti-Semitism. The main target audience of distributors of extremist content is young people aged 18-30 who are dissatisfied with the current political environment and who share a strong sense of injustice. Those aged 18-21 showing the strongest support for the influence of religion on politics. Level of education is also a risk factor: young people with less education tend to engage more with the content." (Publisher description) more

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2019 Media Consumption and Media and Information Literacy Survey in the Countries of Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan)

Internews; USAID (2021), 38 pp.

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Digital trends in the Commonwealth of Independent States region 2021: Information and communication technology trends and developments in the CIS region, 2017-2020

Geneva: ITU (2021), vi, 47 pp.

"This report provides an overview of trends and developments in information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure, access and use in the CIS region, which includes 9 Member States and is home to a population of 240 million people. The report highlights changes in ICT adoption since the l ... more

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Ethics and Journalism in Central Asia: A Comparative Study of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan

Bahtiyar Kurambayev, Eric Freedman

Journal of Media Ethics, volume 35, issue 1 (2020), pp. 31-44

"This study analyzes professional ethical perspectives and practices of Central Asian journalists by examining and comparing the four former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. This study uses in-depth interviews with 24 journalists to examine their ethical ideals ... more

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Media and Social Media Analysis on Religious Freedom and Violent Extremism in Central Asia: Cases of Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan

Search for Common Ground (2020), 33 pp.

"This report analyzes the content of traditional media and social networks on religious freedom and violent extremism in Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. At the same time, the study seeks to examine hate speech against certain religious groups and how pre-labeling affects those officially accu ... more

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USAID’s Access to Information Program (A2I) in Central Asia, Implemented by Internews: Final Report, October 1, 2014 - September 30, 2019

Washington, DC: USAID; Internews (2020), 102 pp.

"The Access to Information Program (A2I) was a five-year Central Asia regional program funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and implemented by Internews under Cooperative Agreement 176-14-00005 from October 1, 2014 to September 30, 2019. During the first phase of ... more

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Information Flows and Radicalization Leading to Violent Extremism in Central Asia

Search for Common Ground; Internews (2019), 77 pp.

"The study is comprised of three main parts: a desk study of available and accessible material – reports, documents and media material; a qualitative study comprising over 200 interviews with ordinary people, experts, and persons with direct experience with radicalization leading to violent extrem ... ism (RVE); and a quantitative component consisting of national surveys of people’s information consumption habits. For the desk study, the effort was made to gain as broad a picture as possible, that is, to cover all five countries of Central Asia – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. However, predictably and unfortunately, Uzbekistan and especially Turkmenistan proved difficult cases to study in full. For both the qualitative and quantitative field research activities, for several reasons, only the first three countries were included. As a result, this study is able to report most robustly on these three countries and propose observations regarding Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan only to a limited extent. Based on the desk study, the drivers of extremist sympathies as established in existing research have been political grievances (injustice from state structures; identity-based discrimination; oppressive political regimes, etc), economic difficulties (unemployment; indebtedness; poverty; and desire for quick and greater income) and ideological motivations (resentment of false values; striving for the singularly just and true life; for reward in a perceived afterlife). To these push and pull factors are added a range of enabling factors, such as migration, young age, gender (women), and means of communication. All these drivers of RVE need to be treated with caution, as stressed by various authors and suggested by evidence gained in field research. A general observation, gained from the desk research and supported by evidence in both qualitative and quantitative field studies, was the difference among the countries in degree of control over the information space, or the degree of hegemony over public discourse. Of the three most fully studied countries, hegemonic discourse was the strongest in Tajikistan, followed by Kazakhstan, and the least in Kyrgyzstan. Uzbekistan, analyzed to a limited extent, would be closer to the extreme of Tajikistan, whereas Turkmenistan was too closed to make reasonably robust observations." (Page 3) more

Journalism under Duress: Worlds of Journalism Study Report (Wave 3: 2021–2025) Deep Insights

Vibrant Information Barometer: Europe & Eurasia Deep Insights

Vibrant Information Barometer: Europe & Eurasia Deep Insights

Vibrant Information Barometer: Europe & Eurasia Deep Insights

Journalism under Duress: Worlds of Journalism Study Report (Wave 3: 2021–2025)
Deep Insights

Vibrant Information Barometer: Europe & Eurasia
Deep Insights

Vibrant Information Barometer: Europe & Eurasia
Deep Insights

Vibrant Information Barometer: Europe & Eurasia
Deep Insights