Review of Oxus Society for Central Asian Affairs (2020): Central Asia Protest Tracker (CAPT)

The Oxus Society for Central Asian Affairs compiled an original dataset that describes and categorizes protest events in the form of an interactive map, while covering variables such as protest types, issues, target types and responses. It contains a collection of all protest data published online in the following areas: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The research team decided to define a protest as follows: "A protest action is a public expression of objection towards an idea or action of an individual or institution, including state organs, businesses, organizations and foreign governments which happens in physical space." (2: 2). In total the data collection contains 2.500+ instances of coded protests. Some countries are however more extensively covered than others. As of summer 2024, work on the data collection seems to be continuing. The data review contains a link to the Central Asia Protest Tracker Website, where all relevant materials such as the Central Asia Protest Tracker Codebook, the full dataset and more are available as a free download.