On 7th December, IWPR Central Asia and CABAR.asia platform held an online International Expert Panel, “Central Asian countries’ vulnerability to propaganda of war and hatred”, which sought to explore the impact of propaganda of war and the ways to avoid its negative consequences.
The international expert meeting was chaired by Mr. Dmitry Zavialov, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Otago. More than 40 participants from Central Asia and beyond gathered online to discuss the following issues:
– How did Russian propaganda dominate the public sphere in Central Asia?
– Social media and propaganda: what consequences does it have? – What are some of the methods to expose pro-war fakes? – Are there any national or international policies towards countering propaganda? – How can the media of the region become independent from propaganda?
IWPR Executive Director Mr. Anthony Borden opened the panel with a keynote on the information crisis the global society is facing now, and stressed the belief that “by facilitating such exchanges IWPR is strengthening the capacity of the civil society and independent media to confront the vital challenges facing Central Asia”. Mr. Borden emphasized the global threat of disinformation which “divides us, drives conflict and hatred and undermines our collective capacity to find solutions”. He added that “for these reasons we believe disinformation is our greatest immediate single challenge.”
Russia has been producing disinformation and driving propaganda narratives for decades. In his speech Mr. Borden elaborated on the concept of “sharp power” saying how Russia combines soft power with subversion, bullying and pressure including pushing people and institutions into self-censorship. The aim is to compel the behavior at home and manipulate opinion and politics abroad.
Traditional narratives as “Russia is being a victim, inevitable collapse of western culture, promotion of traditional values, polarization of them and us” were adopted to support the agenda with the beginning of the war in Ukraine. There might be a lot of contradiction in these narratives, confusion and disorientation are a part of the objective. The big lie is built around competing truth, where the truth is perceived not as facts, but as beliefs. Mr. Borden noted that “it’s a big lie combined with distorting history, victimization, emotive manipulation, and fear mongering.”
The overarching narrative here is that “Ukraine is not a legitimate independent state, Ukrainian language is not real, Ukrainian people do not exist”. These false narratives and distortion floods Central Asia, which is highly dependent on Russia both economically and politically. Russian television broadcasting is present in all Central Asian countries and is free to watch. This propaganda is causing the split in the society of Central Asia.
In social media there are information ‘bubbles’ divided by the position and the side the people support. Propaganda works to activate psychological reaction and manipulate the mood of the society. He also stressed that migrants maybe especially vulnerable to propaganda.
The pro-war propaganda promotes military narratives that might undermine political stability as a split in society grows. The core of wartime propaganda is to instigate hatred for the enemy, support to Russia and to the war itself.
A recent post-mobilization Russian exodus brings another threat. As many migrants those running away from war do not necessarily oppose the politics at the Kremlin, many of them escaped to Central Asia and continue spreading the same propaganda of war and hate. Other narratives abroad in the play, selling an imperial war by deploying anti-imperialistic, anti-colonial language against the West and NATO, particularly in developing countries in Africa, Latin America and the Middle East.
Mr. Anthony Borden suggests that the answer to all these challenges is, first of all, recognizing and labeling it. IWPR has coordinated the major research program on Chinese sharp power globally. The second thing is to understand that it will take dedication and a long-term strategy to combat with. This includes government action to regulate the information landscape and ensure fair play and exclude influence from destabilizing external actors. It also includes the public at large: media literacy, informed consumption, critical reading.
Dr. Rashid Gabdulhakov, Assistant Professor at Centre for Media and Journalism Studies, University of Groningen, in his report covered Sputnik news agency’s propaganda strategies in Central Asia.
Before proceeding he defined propaganda as a “multimodal, multisemiotic and multitool communication strategy aimed at impacting the way people perceive the reality”. By multimodality different forms of communication not only language but also image, references to culture are meant.
While we are constructing arguments that we have outlived post-sovietism, we live in a soviet informed reality. The message is conveyed though variety of platforms, variety of tools, but the key point is that it impacts the way people perceive the reality.
We are conditioned to think about propaganda as something negative, but propaganda is usually very well crafted. It is an entertaining product sometimes. It’s also an emotional product that triggers certain sentiments in people.
Dr. Gabdulhakov underlined that Russian propaganda matters in context of Central Asia exactly because of the “historical impact, daily language and discourses that we use, humor, sentiments, nostalgia, rituals, entertainment, cultural code. He also noted that Central Asian audiences are exposed to Russian propaganda not only at home, but also while they are in migration in Russia. Pro-Kremlin discourses penetrate through a variety of domains: TV, newspapers, books, websites, social media.
Moreover, Central Asian authorities seem to be actively adopting the repressive practices that are in place in Russia where the civil society has been completely cracked down. In the media reality the Putin’s regime is actively installing a digital version of the ‘iron curtain’. And unfortunately, some of these malpractices are evolving in the region as well.
Dr. Gabdulhakov shared some concrete examples from Sputnik news agency. He noticed in his research the following discourses: 1) demonization of the “collective West” when it is portrayed as an enemy with the narrative of conspiracy; 2) demonization of Ukraine and Ukrainian people and dehumanization; 3) glorification of Russia and Putin; 4) endorsement of domestic state leaders; 5) customized reporting on border conflicts.
He shared that we can see how the first discourse echoes now in Kyrgyzstan specifically with the repression of civil society, deportation of Bolot Temirov and the pressure that is put on alternative voices. The last observation regarding the customized reporting on border conflicts is of particular interest, because if Russia positions itself as a potential mediator in this conflict, the state sponsored broadcaster (Sputnik) is doing all the steps to ignite international hatred in the region.
Speaking about what should be done in reaction, the speaker admits that a total ban may be possible, but it’s an empty wish that we can elaborate in our policy report but without concrete smaller steps it cannot be achieved. The following smaller steps can be taken: alternative messages must be generated and disseminated. They also must be multimodal and multisemiotic (delivered through different platforms, different triggers emotional, sentimental, entertaining), and must be delivered in the local languages and in Russian.
The next panelist Mr. Christopher Schwartz, Postdoctoral Research Associate at RIT ESL Global Cybersecurity Institute, shared the experience of building a deepfake detector within the framework of the DeFake project. Deepfake can be considered as “an artificially generated audiovisual renderings that is usually created without a consent of the target”, and it’s getting harder and harder to detect. The deepfakes can be used in pornography, entertainment, and military purposes, which is an issue of collective concern. Deepfakes could be generated by governments, corporations, and individual actors. He identified manipulation of faces and manipulation of entire scenes.
Mr. Schwartz noted that there are different techniques but the most concerning are the face swap and puppet master. We have seen some puppet masters have the military applications. There were examples on both sides targeting both sides of the conflict in Ukraine. One of the examples is the video of the President Zelensky which was not done very well.
Dangers posed by the deepfakes: 1) magnifies mis/disinformation; 2) potentially undermines credibility in journalists and authorities; 3) falsely manipulates emotions and opinions; 4) could lead to organized public action based on false ideas and impressions; 5) deepfakes are easy to produce.
Finally, Mr. Schwartz touched upon the DeFake project and demonstrated a deepfake detector – a tool that the project team has developed with the help of journalists.
Mr. Rustam Gulov, media trainer and consultant, co-founder of Tajikistan’s first fact-checking platform Factcheck.tj, reported on the impact of pro-war propaganda on the population of Central Asia. He admitted that people are changing under pressure of this propaganda.
Talking about Russian propaganda he mainly focused on Russian television, because it’s one of the most popular sources of news not only for elder generation. In Tajikistan 9 out of top 10 most popular channels are Russian TV channels, which are part of Russian propaganda. Russian propaganda is spreading not only through the news, but also through the movies, cultural content. According to the research made by the Internews and its partners, 8 channels out of 10 most popular channels in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan are also Russian TV channels. The Russian propaganda is widely spread in all Central Asian countries.
The second way the Russian propaganda influences the Central Asia is the “newspeak” (the term was crafted by the George Orwell). He presented a number of examples of special language terminology: using ‘clap’ instead ‘explosion’, ‘special military operation’ instead of ‘war’, ‘good will gesture’ instead of ‘withdrawal of Russian troops from previously occupied territories’, ‘negative growth’ instead of ‘recession’, ‘denazification’ instead of ‘war’, ‘liberation’ instead of ‘occupation’ of Ukraine.
This special terminology is used all around Central Asia, even in independent media that are not a part of Russian propaganda. Sometimes they don’t even understand that they help to spread Russian propaganda among the people, even before the war in Ukraine.
Mr. Gulov, summarizing his speech, underlined two main strategies of Russian propaganda in Central Asia: 1) the usage of the TV channels to influence the people not only in Russia but also in Central Asia; 2) the spread of newspeak among the journalists, bloggers and other content creators in Central Asia to influence its audience.
He also added that the Russian propaganda influences Central Asia through labour migrants. For instance, Tajik labour migrants work in Mariupol on construction works. They are affected by Russian propaganda, they believe in Putin and the Russian government, they believe in Russian liberation of people of Ukraine from Nazi government.
Dr. Farkhod Tolipov, Director, Education and Research Institution “Bilim Carvoni”, shared the lessons learnt from propaganda’s impact on Uzbekistan.
In his presentation, Dr. Tolipov defined three types of information we consume every day: 1) full and right information; 2) right but not full information; 3) disinformation.
He stressed that it’s not easy to make a distinction between these types even for professional, because “information environment is getting more and more complicated”. Tools which are used to spread different type of information are so sophisticated, that’s why it “requires great skills, qualification, preparedness, and even morality to distinguish these types and use proper and adequate tools for reaction”.
When talking about information attacks, three levels of this process can be indicated: 1) official information attacks (official propaganda); 2) unofficial attacks (unofficial propaganda); 3) self-targeted attacks (from consumers themselves).
Official attacks include statements made by state leaders and officials like Putin and Lavrov, government-affiliated agencies. Sometimes the official propaganda is so aggressive and more troublesome than unofficial propaganda. For instance, they use official warnings, intimidation, spread fake news. One of the manifestations of these official attacks is reflected in Putin’s speech before the invasion to Ukraine based on the revision of history.
Unofficial attacks are made by the propaganda channels (media, think tanks, expert communities), who organize media campaign to spread specifically prepared myths and fake news, TV shows like Soloviev’s show.
Self-targeted attack or propaganda means when local experts in Central Asian countries themselves contribute to propaganda in unison with Russian propaganda. Probably this situation is related to the existence of some visible and invisible groups of interests in our countries, for whom such propaganda could be beneficial, they might take advantage of this situation.
In the middle of the military actions in Ukraine, Ukrainian Embassy in Tashkent requested the government of Uzbekistan to shut down the propaganda channels because these channels created biased information situation since there no Ukrainian channels broadcast in Uzbekistan. That’s why TV channels are overwhelmed with Russian based sources, which creates to wrong interpretation of war in Ukraine.
Very often we see information attacks which are saturated by the blackmail. For instance, Russian and Uzbekistani media manipulate the issue of labour migrants, saying that because 1,5 million of migrants work in Russian, Uzbekistan is exposed to Russian influence, that’s why we should be careful. That’s why there is no resistance to the Russian propaganda. Sometimes there is official or unofficial support of Russian actions in Ukraine based on the perception of vulnerability of labour migrants working in Russia.
Another example, Mariya Zakharova made several unpleasant and painful statements addressed to Uzbekistan. She mentioned the language policy, change of alphabet to Latin one, saying that these creates uncomfortable conditions for Russian-speaking population in Uzbekistan.
The last example of official information attack was an official visit of the speaker of the State Duma to Tashkent few days ago. During the visit he made a statement which was quite aggressive in a way he warned Uzbekistan about the cooperation with the United States.
After Q&A session with the audience, the panellists summed up the results. They admitted, that there are many and diverse aspects of existing problem of pro-war propaganda and impacts it has on Central Asia.
Watch the full version of the expert meeting here: