InterMedia
launched its first research projects in Eurasia in 1992, amid political
and social changes that were to transform the region in the years to come.
Since then, InterMedia has successfully completed more than 300 quantitative,
qualitative and evaluative projects, including more than 200 representative
surveys, some 50 in Russia alone. InterMedia’s Eurasia team works
in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, the Caucasus, and across Central Asia, on
behalf of international media, including the BBC and Channel One Russia.
As InterMedia analysts continue to chronicle, across the region some governments try to tighten control over media and communications just as populations are exposed and gain access to new technologies. Authoritarian regimes are having a hard time keeping their citizenry in the dark. Often, access to media—through conventional means like television and radio or via hi-tech methods such as the Internet and SMS—as well as the extent to which freedom of speech is allowed to flourish, serve as a barometer of political change.
InterMedia has come up with creative methods to do research in Belarus, the North Caucasus and Uzbekistan, among others.
Jaroslaw "Slavko" Martyniuk is Regional Research Manager for Eurasia.