Page 12 - GEORptOct21

Number of anti-Western messages in Georgian media doubled in 2020 study says
Georgia may be most homophobic country in Europe data suggests
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.
On July 5, a homophobic riot took place in Tbilisi. While the riot was a tragedy, it also reflected the contention, as explored by OC Media's Datablog, that Georgia is the most homophobic European country, a conclusion for which data is available from the International Social Survey programme (ISSP) survey.
Given the participation of priests in the riot, one might expect more religious people to be more homophobic. However, the data suggests that homophobia is prevalent throughout Georgian society and how important religion is in someone’s life is not correlated with homophobic attitudes.
The ISSP survey asked respondents in 33 countries, mainly in Europe, whether sexual relations between two adults of the same sex were always wrong. In Georgia, 84% said they were always wrong, compared with an average of only 37% among all the surveyed countries.
The second most homophobic country in the survey results was Turkey, with 80% of the public there reporting that same-sex sexual relations were always wrong. By comparison, only 69% of Russians said the same. In Hungary, which the European Union is currently suing for passing homophobic legislation, roughly half as many (45%) people said they were always wrong. Georgia’s South Caucasus neighbours Armenia and Azerbaijan were not part of the survey.
The responses seen in the gathered data also vary by age and sex. Young people tended to be less homophobic than older people and women tended to be more homophobic than men, with the exception of men and women in the 35–54 age range, who were equally homophobic.
A conclusion is thus that the riots seen on July 5 underlined that Georgia has a
12 GEORGIA Country Report October 2021 www.intellinews.com