Paper long abstract:

The paper studies the state of media literacy in contemporary Turkmenistan. It focuses on how media literacy understood and practiced in the Turkmen higher educational institutions. The study demonstrates what tools and agenda of media literacy are provided for future communication professionals in the suppressed media environment.

Competing numerous media literacy definitions are formulated in globalized context. Therefore, this paper uses the basic context formulated by the U.S. based National Association for Media Literacy Education that reads "the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, create, and act using all forms of communication". It is arguable that there may be a contradictory phenomenon between the traditional Turkmen media control strategies imposed by the political powers and the core principles of the media literacy that educate people to be critical thinkers.

The empirical data collection is based on the analysis of the curriculum designed for the students of journalism at the Turkmen Universities. Additionally, survey questions were created to organize online dialogue with a few Turkmen language users. Parallel to the above mentioned approach the study attempts to use the arts-based research practice, which covers using images, scenes and sounds of the TV reports. This method may allow ensuring authenticity and truthfulness of the research findings.