Page 13 - GEORptNov21

Armenia, Georgia ranked as ‘Free’ countries in Freedom on the Net report, Azerbaijan and Turkey as ‘Not Free’
Number of anti-Western messages in Georgian media doubled in 2020 study says
Freedom House has ranked Armenia as a “free” country in its Freedom on the Net 2021: The Crisis of Social Media report. Armenia’s neighbour Georgia is also a “free” country, while Azerbaijan and Turkey are ranked as “not free” in the edition of the annual assessment. Armenia’s southern neighbour Iran is “partly free.”
According to the report, “Internet freedom in Armenia declined significantly as a result of restrictions on the free flow of information the government adopted during the armed conflict between ethnic Armenian and Azerbaijani forces in Nagorno-Karabakh.”
“The implementation of martial law in late September 2020 placed broad restrictions on the media’s ability to report on the fighting, including by banning speech deemed to endanger national security, permitting authorities to demand content removal, and mandating fines for noncompliance. A number of Turkish and Azerbaijani websites with .az and .tr domains were inaccessible for several weeks. Users also reported problems accessing TikTok,” Freedom House said.
Prominent news sites also faced technical attacks, including distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, leaving many of them temporarily inaccessible during the conflict. In a positive move, a measure that had required telecommunications companies to provide authorities with subscriber metadata in order to facilitate contact tracing, adopted in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, was lifted in September 2020 alongside a virus-related state of emergency.
The report found that global internet freedom declined for the 11th consecutive year. The environment for human rights online deteriorated in 30 countries this year, while only 18 countries registered net gains. The largest decline occurred in Myanmar, followed by Belarus and Uganda. Ecuador experienced the largest improvement, followed by The Gambia.
The US ranked 12th overall, while Iceland was once again the top performer. For the seventh consecutive year, China was found to have the worst conditions for internet freedom.
Comparing 2019 to 2020, the number of anti-American and anti-Western messages in Georgian media doubled, a new report by the Media Development Fund NGO has found.
The Anti-Western Propaganda 2020 report was released on September 22. The document is based on an analysis of traditional and online media, as well as data obtained as a result of identifying sources behind the dissemination of false information.
Over the past year, the NGO's observers have monitored the media, as well as other sources, including politicians, clergy, non-governmental organisations and individual members of the public.
The report also shows that the number of anti-Western messages has tripled in the past five years. The number of anti-American messages grew the most. According to the report, the upward trend is partly due to ongoing internal processes in the US and the defeat of Donald Trump in the US presidential election of November 2020. On top of that, in the context of the current local elections in Georgia, a campaign-do-discredit was initiated by the pro-Kremlin Alliance of Patriots party against an American research organisation, NDI-IRI. The report concluded that the number of propaganda messages against the "West", namely the European Union, the US and international Western organisations, doubled.
These messages reinforced the view that Georgia’s partners were encroaching on the country’s sovereignty, interfering in its internal affairs and running the country.
13 GEORGIA Country Report November 2021 www.intellinews.com