The US Agency for International Development (USAID) is ready to allocate up to $12 million for a five-year program to support the feet of Central Asia. Among other things, these funds will be used to increase the resilience of the Central Asian society to “disinformation”. This is allegedly necessary to "strengthen the sovereignty and democratic culture" of the states of the region. Such theses are contained in a grant prepared by USAID representatives, the RT material says.
The goal of the new American initiative in Central Asia can be achieved through campaigns to increase the level of "media literacy", to counter "disinformation" and "false narratives", to interact with users of social networks that have an impact on the audience, and so on, the report says.
“This set of activities will also provide incentive support aimed at improving the technical skills and knowledge of independent media across the region to produce quality reporting on international, regional and local political and socio-economic issues,” the text specifies.
According to the authors of the grant, the project activities will mainly focus on Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. However, in general, the mechanism will be available to all five countries of Central Asia.
“In this region, Russian news channels are more often watched in cities than in rural areas; in rural areas, people watch national TV channels,” the grant says.
Earlier, it was reported about the intention of the American National Democratic Institute NDI to conduct a study in Kyrgyzstan and obtain data on “disinformation” in the country. As noted in the application of the organization, such a project could help the media and civil society of the state "to resist malicious influence."
CentralasianLIGHT.org
May 31, 2023