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Paper abstract:

This paper explores the role of social media in the religious lives of Muslim youth in Kyrgyzstan. Social media have become an important source of religious knowledge and contribute to religious expression, experience and identity formation. The Internet has immensely changed the way religion is understood and practiced today and offers new and innovative forms of religious engagement. The youth, who are considered to be ‘digital natives’ or ‘Internet generations’, offer an interesting case to observe these transformations. The first part of the paper deals with the notion of ‘religious engagement’ which has broadened with the increasing communication and technological development and includes engagements in the interconnected online and offline worlds. In the second part, the author presents the results of her recent fieldwork in Kyrgyzstan, where the she conducted a survey and in-depth interviews among Muslim youth and religious authorities which was complemented with digital ethnography. The survey focuses on four main topics, such as: (1) the social media usage among Kyrgyzstani youth in general; (2) the social media usage for religious purposes; (3) knowledge of the youth about Islam and (4) their observations of changing tendencies in relation to Islam in the country. This topic lies at the intersection of anthropology, religion and media studies and provides a good opportunity for an interdisciplinary dialogue on digital religion, which, according to Campbell and Altenhofen (2016) studies not only how religion happens online, but also how religious communities ‘have adapted, responded to, and engaged with the digital culture’.

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In the digitalized world, the use of social media is increasing and spreading . Increasing awareness of mental health issues during the COVID-19 became the priority. Health communication ensues between doctors, patients, and other healthcare professionals, and its strength is important. the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, affected almost every country and forced the world to a more isolated lifestyle, meaning that some people might experience distress and not been able to identify and seek help . It’s worth mentioning that during pandemics social support is relatively low leavening vulnerable groups at the greatest risk, further perpetuating mental health distress and reducing their ability to cope. Health institutions, doctors, and patients can now communicate through new media and discuss health-related issues through these channels. It is vital to try and elevate negative effects of self-isolation using all means, including social media and creative communication tools.

Method:

The report employs the method, which relies on learning through multiple methodologies: Learning from interviews; Learning from ethnographic observations, learning from focus groups.

Results:

This study describes the role of evidence based new media opportunities in health communication during the pandemic. In this case study from Georgia, we present our collaborative project activities that lead us to develop and create a safe and engaging public forum about mental health concerning COVID 19 pandemic. This collaboration between Cognitive Behaviour Treatment specialists and health communicators created a space for open discussion about mental health on a Facebook page that increased its followers from 8 000 to 48000 members in one year and became a popular information platform specializing in mental health in Georgia.

The study highlights some insights how innovative tools such as infographics, animation, podcasting crowds sourcing, online webinars and open conversations and other ways of modern storytelling and communication has facilitated and widened the discussion between public, doctors, and patients in Georgia.

Effective MHL intervention is based on a multidisciplinary approach, teamwork that requires time, enthusiasm, planning and preparation, evaluation and monitoring, problem identification and consideration and audience engagement.

It is recommended that the state allocate funds to promote similar cooperation between parties.

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Over the recent decades, Kazakhstan has embraced numerous Western institutions and practices, the public council is a state-sanctioned participatory institution. There is various research on civil society, social capital, ethnicity, and open government in Central Asia. However, little to no attention was paid to the impact of political culture on the performance of newly adopted institutions in Central Asia and Kazakhstan in particular. This research attempts to fill this gap by exploring the organizational performance of public councils and linking it to the social capital thesis offered by Putnam. Data has been collected via semi-structured interviews, surveys, non-participant observations, and archival work in four regional public councils of Kazakhstan. Two public councils were selected from ethnically homogenous regions, the other two were selected from ethnically heterogeneous regions. The fieldwork findings show that networks and reciprocity have an impact on organizational performance, however, it appears that trust does not necessarily go hand in hand with networks in local settings. Moreover, ethnically heterogeneous regions show neo-liberal and state-led civil societies, whilst ethnically homogenous regions have a communal and state-led civil society.

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This paper addresses the historical background of three Soviet-era tropes – loss of culture, loss of literacy, and loss of intergenerational and interethnic harmony – commonly used in the Russian media’s discussions of the Kazakh alphabet shift from Cyrillic to Latin. I seek to prove that mainstream Russian publications still maintain a deeply Soviet worldview when discussing issues of language in the former Soviet republics, relying heavily on the notion that the USSR “gave” them a number of “gifts,” namely the culture, literacy, and harmony that they now perceive Kazakhstan to be losing via its alphabet shift. I will analyze each trope from both a historical and a literary perspective, beginning each sub-section by placing each trope in its Soviet linguistic context and proceeding to analyze its usage in contemporary mainstream Russian publications, such as Pravda and Izvestiia.