Telegram Channels Now Surpass TV as Source of News for Uzbeks, First All-Uzbekistan Study of Media Use Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 2 – A joint EU-Uzbekistan government study of media use in that Central Asian republic, the first all-Uzbekistan poll of its kind, finds that Uzbeks are now more likely to turn to telegram channels than to television for news but they are still far more likely to trust TV than either telegram channels or social media.

            According to the representative sample of 1440 Uzbeks, 66.2 percent of them turn to telegram channels, 44.6 percent to television, and 41.6 percent to social networks for news; but 44.3 percent trust TV while only11.3 percent trust telegram channels and only 7.4 percent news sites.

            (For the study as a whole in Uzbek, see https://massmedia.uz/oz/news/h2rdxffx-duacoky7-eedktvj9-nmcr-uzb; for a discussion of its findings in Russian, see podrobno.uz/cat/obchestvo/telegram-operedil-televidenie-po-populyarnosti-sredi-istochnikov-novostey-v-uzbekistane/.)

            Despite these low levels of trust, Uzbeks are active users of social networks and telegram channels, with 64.8 percent saying they use social networks regularly and 86.1 percent saying the turn to telegram channels. Television attracts fewer and radio broadcasts even less, with more than 70 percent of Uzbeks saying they don’t use it at all.

            The differences between younger and older Uzbeks, those living cities and those living in villages, and those more educated and less educated parallel findings of media consumption in other post-Soviet states.