“As a teacher, I spend a lot of time in classrooms, and once in a while I hear stories from students about cases of online fraud, stalking, or fake news that they or their relatives have fallen victim to,” Zilola says. “I can’t forget the harrowing case where a 26-year-old man from Andijan impersonated a schoolgirl to coerce a 10-year-old girl into sending him intimate photographs and videos. In that particular case, the man was sentenced for a coercion attempt. Tragically, though, there are many cases where online fraud or the dissemination of false information result in suicide, loss of savings, or even human trafficking.”

For Zilola, classroom discussions and personal stories shared by students highlighted an issue faced by millions of internet users worldwide: the importance of critical and online media literacy skills. “This seemed like a ‘social abscess’ that had to be tended to,” Zilola notes.

To address this issue, Zilola applied to the Central Asia Youth Leadership Academy (CAYLA), organized under Eurasia Foundation’s Social Innovation in Central Asia program. CAYLA helps forward-thinking youth across the region enhance their leadership skills and pursue civically and socially important projects. As part of the program, Zilola took courses on creative and critical thinking, effective communication, public speaking, and project design. It was while studying at CAYLA that she decided to harness her experiences to develop a project idea on media awareness. “I wanted to prompt my students to be vigilant of misinformation and fraud, and media literacy workshops appeared to be the most effective means to achieve this.”

After completing the program, Zilola applied for and received a CAYLA alumni-exclusive $1500 grant to launch Critical Lens, a media literacy training project dedicated to strengthening critical thinking skills among high school students. The training sessions, delivered to 24 participants, featured expert-led discussions on combating fake news, developing digital research skills, learning the foundations of cybersecurity, and fact-checking. Fellow CAYLA participants Munisa Rayimova and Javokhir Ne’matov provided technical expertise and guidance on the project curriculum, significantly enhanced participant engagement, and contributed to the project’s success.

“The project on media literacy was great,” says Nigina Suvankulova, a participant. “I learned to analyze content’s sources, do fact-checking, be aware of cybersecurity threats, and much more.” Inspired by the knowledge she gained from Critical Lens workshops, Nigina decided to launch her own social media blog aimed at increasing media literacy among fellow teens. Currently, Nigina is working on a content plan for her blog.

Looking ahead, Zilola plans to pursue a master’s program in education and innovation and keep working with teens on media literacy. “Teenagers are often puzzled by the many distractions that the media and social networks bombard them with, and I want them to feel grounded and confident in the choices they make,” she explains. “It is the teenagers, after all, who are going to be the primary force driving change in the future and I want to play my part in ensuring they do it well.”

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The “Equal Rights for Suburban Areas” campaign is dedicated to raising awareness about the living conditions in Semey’s under-resourced suburbs. These include a lack of clean drinking water, poor public transport, limited leisure opportunities or sports grounds for children, inadequate lighting, and contaminated natural areas. The team behind the campaign highlights these and other issues on their YouTube channel, which is maintained with SICA backing. To date, their videos have gained more than 250,000 views on YouTube.

“Our main weapon is raising awareness in the media. The popularity of our YouTube channel and wide media coverage of the project in general prompted us to understand that one can really achieve change with the help of the media. So many people got involved [with our project], there are so many ‘likes’ and ‘shares.’ This is the real reason why government officials cannot ignore us or what we do. They fear discontentment of the citizens,” says Khadisha.

As part of the awareness campaign, Khadisha’s team has organized several public meetings with local government officials. With SICA support, the team also conducted several public workshops on state budget allocation research and social media campaign strategies. “As part of this initiative, we want to grow a cohort of watchdogs who know how to tackle corruption in the field of public spending and conduct public awareness campaigns,” she explains.

Dirty water has been a primary concern of Voskhod and Vodny villages for several decades. Some villagers have developed kidney stones due to contaminated well water. On February 22, 2022, as a result of the media campaign and public meetings with the officials, the town administration installed a standpipe with drinking water at the junction of Voskhod and Vodny villages. “Even though one standpipe is not enough for two villages, this is the first real change [we have managed to achieve],” says Khadisha.

Another major win for the team was the addition of a bus between Semey and Voskhod village. Prior to the campaign, the bus circulated every two hours. With the new bus in operation, people’s waiting time will be shortened significantly.

According to Khadisha, these villages are neglected by authorities for several reasons. The town administration does not include the villages when allocating funds for infrastructure development. Furthermore, the villagers are not fully aware of their own rights. Indeed, even leaders dealing with this issue may not know how to effectively interact with government bodies to ensure their voices are heard.

“Our long-term priority is to scale up the project and launch a movement to improve the quality of life of the residents of [all of] Kazakhstan’s suburban areas,” says Khadisha. “This project helped us gain invaluable experience and we hope we can pass it on to groups in other cities.”

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Comprised of lawyers, civil society organizations, and law enforcement representatives from across Central Asia, the network meets regularly to collaborate on this intrinsically cross-border issue. In 2020, they developed a multi-country legal toolkit to facilitate assistance in countries of origin, transit, and destination. Within just three months, the network had supported the reintegration of fourteen trafficking victims and provided legal assistance to two migration cases.

To draw further government and community attention to human trafficking in Central Asia, and to build momentum around cases that had been wrongfully dismissed, Eurasia Foundation also facilitated local journalistic investigations into several trafficking cases. One investigation traced the story of Dilyara, a fifty-five-year-old woman who fell victim to sex trafficking. Dilyara escaped and returned home. However, the local prosecution office refused to investigate her case.

Eurasia Foundation supported a high-profile media campaign surrounding Dilyara’s experience. Her story received widespread public attention, including from local and national law enforcement officials, who reopened her case. Her trafficker was found guilty of repeat offenses. Dilyara hopes her case will encourage more survivors to speak out about their experience and participate in investigatory processes in the future.

For more stories from Eurasia Foundation’s 2020 Annual Report: A Year Like No Other, click here.

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To help citizens distinguish fact from fiction and promote a free and independent media, Eurasia Foundation trains investigative journalists, media producers, and media consumers to recognize and refute false narratives. Programs explore the motivations, strategies, and tactics used to spread false information, and coach citizens in vital critical thinking and fact-checking skills.

Iskandar is a youth entrepreneur and health champion, who enrolled in Eurasia Foundation’s media literacy workshops to learn how to be an effective digital citizen. Iskandar recognized that members of his community, which was hit hard by the pandemic, were awash in dubious information and unsure of where to turn for help. Iskandar wanted to be part of the solution.

As part of the Eurasia Foundation course, Iskandar participated in a multi-day online media literacy campaign. The campaign combined videos, media challenges, polls, infographics, links to reliable news and resources, and insights from international media experts. Iskandar learned how to identify unreliable news stories, analyze the motivations behind these narratives, and prove certain stories were spreading inaccurate information about the pandemic. He also practiced communication and leadership skills to help others in his community locate reliable information and debunk false claims.

Following the campaign, Iskandar launched an ongoing project to help raise awareness about COVID-19 for people with preexisting conditions.

For more stories from Eurasia Foundation’s 2020 Annual Report: A Year Like No Other, click here.

The post Breaking Down Disinformation appeared first on Eurasia Foundation.

The post Breaking Down Disinformation appeared first on Eurasia Foundation.

Zarema is one of the young people in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan who report first-rate stories for Kloop.kg. Since Kloop launched its journalism program in 2008, it has trained hundreds of aspiring young journalists to ask tough questions, use multiple sources and present stories from a unique angle. Averaging 6,000 unique views each day, Kloop has gained a reputation for producing first-class writers whose reporting is both independent and well-balanced.

The Kloop schools teach practical skills: newswriting, social media, photography, videography, and media ethics and law. Students immediately apply what they learn in the classroom by writing stories and receiving detailed feedback from Kloop’s editors. Those articles that meet the news outlet’s high journalistic standards are published online.

“It’s amazing to see a 15-year-old boy writing about politics in Kyrgyzstan,” Zarema said. “The program motivates young people to understand what’s going on through talking and writing about events in the country.”

Kloop has become more than just a journalism school. It has also created a network of young people in Bishkek who are interested in politics, art and culture, and given them a forum for dialogue and exchange. For students like Zarema, Kloop has greatly influenced their personal identities and professional aspirations.

By the time she was a sophomore in the journalism department at Bishkek’s Kyrgyz-Russian Slavic University, Zarema felt there was nothing more for her to learn. “There are no real journalists on faculty,” she said. “The degree program wasn’t practical enough. The only thing they teach well is literature.”

After first learning about Kloop on Twitter, Zarema saw an opening for a full-time Russian language editor. The prospect of learning by reporting on real stories was far more compelling than staid university lectures on journalism. Zarema put her formal studies on hold, and after two weeks of hands-on training with experienced editors and writers, she began writing her own stories.

Last October, a crowd of 1,000 people gathered in Bishkek to support the nationalization of the Kumtor gold mine. As the crowd swelled, Ata Jurt party leader Kamchybek Tashiev and two other party members attempted to storm the White House, the presidential palace in Kyrgyzstan. They were arrested. With little information coming out about the arrests, Zarema and 30 fellow journalists clamored at the main police headquarters, waiting through the night for updates to come out so that each could be the first to break the story.

“There’s no feeling comparable to being in front of the main police headquarters after political unrest, trying to break the story first. It’s night and cold. You’re thirsty and hungry, but you don’t care. You have to find the right people to explain what happened,” she said.

While Zarema wasn’t first to break the story, her report drew hundreds of views.

Because of Zarema’s strong performance as a Kloop journalist and editor, she was chosen by the U.S. Embassy in Bishkek to participate in an exchange to the United States. It was her first visit, where she met the legendary U.S. journalist Bob Woodward.

While covering the U.S. presidential elections for Kloop, she visited Washington, New York, Reno, Chicago and San Francisco, which was easily her favorite.

She was impressed with the high level of political awareness and the in-depth statistics that American journalists have access to about voting behavior in the country.

“For example, American journalists know that Barack Obama is popular with women with dogs,” Zarema said. “We don’t have this kind of detailed polling information in Kyrgyzstan.”

Zarema’s visit to the US and the relationships she built with professional journalists only strengthened her drive.

In the fall, Zarema plans to move to Russia and start again as a student at the highly regarded journalism program at St. Petersburg State University. With the analytical skills that she learned from Kloop, she is more than prepared.

“Kloop made me a person. I didn’t know who I was before,” she said. “Now I know I’m a journalist and I want to do this for the rest of my life.”

Building on Kloop’s success in Bishkek, Eurasia Foundation partnered with local nongovernmental organizations and universities to launch similar programs to train and inspire young journalists in Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and other parts of Kyrgyzstan. Launched in 2010, the region-wide Kloop program is creating a much needed new cadre of independent-minded journalists in Central Asia. The program is funded by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor at the U.S. Department of State and is implemented by a partnership of Eurasia Foundation, Eurasia Foundation of Central Asia andKloop Media.

The post Journalism Program Inspires Young Women in Central Asia appeared first on Eurasia Foundation.

One of these journalists is 21-year-old Ilya Karimdjanov. Ilya was a journalism student in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, but he dropped out because the program bore little reality to modern journalism. Central Asian journalism programs typically follow a theory-based educational model that frequently graduates students who have never conducted an interview or reported a story.

“The only thing we were doing in university was listening and listening,” stated Ilya. “Most of the teachers don’t know what journalism really is.”

While the PYJ program compresses its training into three months, Ilya said that he learned more through the short courses than in three years of journalism school.

“After one week of training . . . you begin to interview sources and write real stories,” he said.

The PYJ program builds upon the success of Kloop.kg, a web portal and media school in Bishkek that provides both training and a platform for young journalists to publish their work. Operating since 2008, Kloop has quickly distinguished itself as a serious news outlet. A number of Kloop journalists are accredited to cover parliament, and Kloop was one of the few sites in Kyrgyzstan to cover the ethnic violence in 2010. Kloop is now one of the main hosts of blogging platforms in the country. Eurasia Foundation has expanded the Kloop model, establishing similar youth media schools in Almaty, Dushanbe and Osh.

Kloop schools teach practical skills in five modules: newswriting, social media, photography, media ethics and law, and videography. Students apply what they have learned immediately, publishing their work online through the Kloop network. Before an article is published, Kloop’s editors review each piece and insist on a minimum of two sources, which is a journalistic standard that most other outlets in the region do not follow.

The increasing popularity of Internet journalism and social media in Kyrgyzstan is changing the nature of journalism in the country, and Kloop graduates have gravitated toward both.

Sabina Reingold, another Kloop graduate, thinks that social media and Internet journalism are beginning to make elected officials more open and accountable to citizens. An increasing number of elected officials in Kyrgyzstan use Twitter and post statements on the micro-blogging platform. Both Sabina and Ilya use Twitter to follow government officials’ statements and then use them as a springboard for interviews or to verify quotes.

Young people, especially in Bishkek, are active on social media sites, and often leave comments on Facebook and Twitter in response to elected officials’ statements. Even though Kyrgyzstan’s elected officials are not known for their responsiveness to citizen demands, they feel obligated to reach out. In a sense, social media is prompting the country’s elected officials to engage in more give-and-take with journalists and ordinary citizens.

Akmaral Satinbaeva, a 24-year-old PYJ trainer at the Osh school in southern Kyrgyzstan, sees the spike in Internet journalism in Kyrgyzstan as a positive trend because it allows for immediate feedback from readers and its speed prevents government or opposition party interference with media content before it is published.

“For these reasons, I think trust in Internet journalism is increasing,” Akmaral offered.

In addition to training and an opportunity to publish, the PYJ program also helps its students identify internships and opportunities to apply for grants to start their own media outlets. It has placed Kloop graduates in a number of major independent media outlets in Central Asia, including Asia Plus, AKIpress, the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, K-News, Interfax-Kazakhstan and NewEurasia.net. With their practical journalism skills, Kloop graduates are highly sought after. The Osh school recently graduated a second cohort of young journalists, and it has fielded calls from media outlets eagerly requesting introductions to its graduates.

“Even if [our graduates] don’t become journalists, we are training young people to be skeptical and evaluate multiple sources,” Akmaral said. She sees this as a critically important development, especially in Osh.

In June 2010, when ethnic violence broke out between ethnic Kyrgyz and ethnic Uzbeks in southern Kyrgyzstan, there was little accurate information available and rumors abounded. The violence left approximately 470 dead and hundreds of thousands displaced.
“It was impossible to get timely information from the local mass media,” Akmaral noted. “During the June events, social media and internet journalism played a great role by providing real information.”

Many young residents of southern Kyrgyzstan accessed blogs and Facebook through their mobile phones to verify what was taking place.

The PYJ program is the first of its kind to target youth for professional journalism training in Central Asia. It fills gaps left open by inadequate university programs and NGOs that train working – and sometimes cynical – journalists. Instead, PYJ is producing a cadre of new journalists who are already transforming journalism in Kyrgyzstan and beyond.

Akmaral Satinbaeva, Ilya Karimdjanov, and Sabina Reingold (left to right), graduates of the Professional Youth Journalism in Central Asia program and now trainers and working journalists in Kyrgyzstan, participated in an Open World Leadership Center professional exchange in Washington, DC as social media experts in March 2012.

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