The Practice of Allocating Budgetary Funds for Advertising and Dissemination of Information in Media - 2021

The following report reflects the 2021 practice of allocating budgetary funds for the purpose of advertising and dissemination of information in media and is based on publicly available data of the State Procurement Agency, and, in selected cases, additional information requested from public agencies. To illustrate the editorial policies of media outlets that received budgetary contracts, the study also includes individual examples of media coverage.

The introductory part of the report summarizes the main findings; The main part dissects the practice of allocating budgetary contracts for the purpose of advertising and information dissemination according to different types of media - television, radio, online, print and social media. A separate chapter is devoted to the allocation of budgetary funds on social media, including contracts that obligate individual media outlets to post materials on various Facebook groups and pages. The last part deals with the editorial policies of those media outlets, which in some cases, carry homophobic and anti-Western content, and, in selected cases, are involved in pro-governmental coordinated campaigns aimed at discrediting its opponents.

Author: Mariam Pataridze
Research: Giorgi Rizhvadze
Data processing: Mariam Tsutskiridze
Editor: Tamar Kintsurashvili
Link: The Practice of Allocating Budgetary Funds for Advertising and Dissemination of Information in Media - 2021