"Dialogue Through Film is a unique initiative bringing together young Armenians from Nagorny Karabakh and Azerbaijanis to make short films about the conflict that divides them. Over 30 young film-makers have taken part, and thousands of Armenians and Azeris have watched their films. This handbook of
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fers information, guidance and resources for you to organise your own screenings and discussions of a selection of these films. Our aim is to encourage and facilitate independent debate in Armenian and Azerbaijani societies about each other, the Nagorny Karabakh conflict, and the many challenging issues confronting Armenian-Azerbaijani reconciliation and the peaceful resolution of the conflict." (Foreword)
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"This paper reviews recent events and legal developments related to the Internet and social media in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. They include legislation extending libel laws to online communications, blocking of oppositional and independent websites, and punishi
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ng journalists who report or comment for online media." (Introduction)
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"About 39 percent started to read regularly at elementary school age, and 44 percent at primary and high school age. As compared to the last five years, 37 percent of respondents stopped reading completely, 43 percent read less, 6 percent read as much as they read before, and only 14 percent said th
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ey read more as compared to the last five years. The more the dynamic of reading decreases, the more the number of male representatives increases (from 34 percent to 51 percent). The more the dynamic of reading increases, the greater the share of young people (18-34 years old) becomes (from 29 percent to 61 percent) The more the dynamics of reading increases, the greater the number of people with higher education becomes (from about 18 percent to 53 percent), while the number of people with a secondary education decreases (from about 42 percent to 16 percent)." (Summary of quantitative research results, page 43)
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"This report is the third in a series of comprehensive studies of internet freedom around the globe and covers developments in 47 countries that occurred between January 2011 and May 2012. Over 50 researchers, nearly all based in the countries they analyzed, contributed to the project by researching
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laws and practices relevant to the internet, testing the accessibility of select websites, and interviewing a wide range of sources. This year's findings indicate that restrictions on internet freedom in many countries have continued to grow, though the methods of control are slowly evolving, becoming more sophisticated and less visible. Brutal attacks against bloggers, politically motivated surveillance, proactive manipulation of web content, and restrictive laws regulating speech online are among the diverse threats to internet freedom emerging over the past two years. Nevertheless, several notable victories have also occurred as a result of greater activism by civil society, technology companies, and independent courts, illustrating that efforts to advance internet freedom can yield results." (www.freedomhouse.org, January 14, 2013)
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"In the bleak press rights territory of post-Soviet Central Asia, domestic and international nong-overnmental organisations, foreign governments, news outlets, and multinational entities such as the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe (OSCE) and UNESCO monitor constraints on the pres
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s. They also protest censorship and decry journalists‘arrests, prosecutions, harassment, and murders." (Abstract)
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"Examining the role of memory in the transition from totalitarian to democratic systems, this book makes an important contribution to memory studies. It explores memory as a medium of and impediment to change, looking at memory's biological, cultural, narrative and socio-psychological dimensions." (
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Publisher description)
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"In March 2005, a relatively nonviolent uprising ousted an authoritarian president in the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan. In the aftermath of the so-called Tulip Revolution, press rights advocates and journalists welcomed the promise of greatly enhanced freedoms. However, the new regime proved
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to be as authoritarian and corrupt as its predecessor and little liberalization of the press system was evident five years later. Physical assaults continued, including murders, as did harassment, libel suits, impediments to access to information, license denials and self-censorship. There was only slow movement toward privatizing of state-owned media. Independent and oppositional media also remained in financial peril due to the country’s weak economy and high poverty level. Thus, 20 years after independence and a half-decade after the Tulip Revolution, the Soviet propaganda model for a press system was dead in name, but many major attributes survived, with significant implications for the continuum of authoritarianism in other postcommunist nations. The degree to which the April 2010 coup and subsequent constitutional change to a parliamentary democracy will spur an expansion of press rights and sustain market-based independent media outlets remains speculative amid grave concerns about continuing anti-press events." (Abstract)
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"This chapter examines whether training Turkish journalists using online training modules offered by the BBC, increased their awareness of ethical editorial issues. It also discusses the potential, as well as the obstacles, for establishing more democratic forms of journalism. The chapter begins by
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providing context to the discussion of journalism training by exploring the outline features of the media system and professionalization in the Turkish setting [...] Ethical guidelines may not be a magical solution in themselves, since political culture and political economic structure are important, but at least they can encourage debate and increase journalists' self-awareness. It is difficult to assess what the specific short-term impact of the project has been, but it is possible to say that the process in which I participated reminded me once again how important it is to be self-reflective and also to analyze our working principles and practices." (Pages 112-128)
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"During 2010 Kyrgyzstan experienced two periods of conflict that took the country to the brink of civil war: the overthrow of President Kurmanbek Bakiyev in April and the ethnic violence in the south of the country in June. The use of blogs and social network sites as well as mobile and multimedia p
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latforms during the upheaval has led some observers to link developments in Kyrgyzstan to other recent cases of social protest where new media has been prominent. However, these events offer no simple answer to the current social media debate. The complex and shifting role of new media as a factor in the events in Kyrgyzstan illustrates that the two conflicts were different in important ways and that new media was used differently in each. While new media made significant contributions to these events, it did not drive them and its importance has to be seen alongside the more conventional mobilization techniques and the role of traditional international media—which was often the source of social media reporting." (Abstract)
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"This report investigates the relationships between media freedoms, financial sustainability of media in emerging markets, and international media support. It is based on a survey of more than 220 newspapers and media executives in more than sixty countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas,
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and on five in-depth country studies: Egypt, Georgia, Guatemala, Mozambique and Vietnam. Research results indicate that media executives see the greatest opportunities in three principle areas: investing in new technology and multimedia operations; developing journalists’ skills; and enhancing the skills of staff in commercial departments to improve revenue and efficiency." (Publisher description)
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