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Paper Short Abstract:

Turkmenistan is considered the most closed state in Central Asia, with no free media. system. This paper examines the alternative media targeted at the Turkmen audience that may impact the audience behavior and its role in developing critical thinking.

Paper abstract:

This paper examines the alternative foreign media in Turkmenistan, where state propaganda and repression prevail. It analyses the impact of foreign media content on audience behavior and its role in the development of critical thinking. The study is based on a content analysis of alternative media channels, including social media, interviews with journalists and bloggers, and archival material on the development of Turkmen alternative media. Turkmen society perceives the mass media as a propaganda tool and does not use it as a platform for dialogue within society. Therefore, the ruling political elite is able to use the mass media to strengthen its power without encountering resistance from the public or from the mass media employees themselves. This analysis aims to highlight possible changes in the minds of society that have hardly been studied so far. It focuses on the dynamics of alternative media under the rules of totalitarian and authoritarian regimes that emerged during the Cold War period in the Soviet Union and after the collapse of the communist system. The study of the role of alternative foreign media focused on Turkmenistan shows that foreign media, in their attempt to reach the population through various ways and means, are the only potential source of information in the authoritarian context that monopolizes the country's media landscape. Nevertheless, under the conditions of secure access to the Internet and other tools of secure transmission of foreign channels, the influence of such media can have an impact on the society living in the authoritarian regime. Their limits are determined by the factors of disruption of broadcasts in the country, blocking of websites with alternative news and information critical of government policies, and non-accreditation of local journalists working for such foreign media. In Turkmenistan, the role of foreign media tends to fall under these aforementioned factors.