Armenia: YouTube, Facebook Emerging as Reform Tools in Yerevan

I’m reposting here a highly optimistic article about Internet in Armenia by Marianna Grigorian. Marianna, a respect journalist and my good collegue, contacted me asking to respond to some questions. Too bad, I was busy and responded only after she had sent the article in. As Marianna told me, if I had responded earlier, her article might have a totally different perspective. Pity.

Other than that, the article makes a great read, but its rather unrealistic. I’m quoted here, but the quote comes from a discussion we had much earlier.

This is the second story on YouTube and social media I’ve seen so far, which is arriving at wrong conclusions. Hopefully, Sunday will give me time to say a word or two on what I really think on those scandalous YouTube videos. Meanwhile, Marianna’s article is below.

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“Click-to-Share Democracy” in Armenia

Simon Blogian has written a great article for Ararat Online Magazine is called Armenia’s Click-to-Share Democracy and explores the recent netivisim (Internetnet activism) boom in Armenia. I'm quoted there too :))

Women abused in their homes, conscripts humiliated in the military, and children abused at schools. None of the above are new phenomena in post-Soviet Armenia. But that’s the impression one gets by observing Armenia’s social networking. Day after day, YouTube videos (largely shared through Facebook) emerge depicting human rights violations, followed by societal anger, activism, and some government action.

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Thoughts on recent transformations of Armenian blogosphere

The growing influence of social networks, especially Facebook, has triggered discussions around the future of the Armenian blogosphere.
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Western media at their best.

The journalist's question about Georgia gets censored on CBS. A reporter makes a comparison between the US reaction to 911 and Russia's reaction to Georgian attacks and the satellite feed drops off in the middle of his question. TV is censored every day and every hour but sometimes the censorship is plain to see.This time it was on CBC in Canada.

Brainwashing via Terrorizing... Armenian approach vs. US approach

In this video Naom Chomski speaks about the US technique of terrorizing the nation in order to retain power of the president. We have all seen the example of George W. Bush and his Afganistan/Iraq (probably also Iran) campaigns - so even if your connection does not allow to view the videos, that's roughly what its about.

On my side, I want to add something strange I've noticed: Armenian authorities are persuading the US, OSCE, etc. that unless they are re-elected, unless the Kocharian regime is continued, the Karabakh problem won't be solved... I mean - Kocharian is just brilliant. He has taken the well known American PR technique of retaining power by terrifying the population by various horrible threats: Communits, Nuclear Bombs, Terrorists, etc... and using it onto the inventors of the technique - the US and the OSCE! I don't even know how to react - laugh or cry!



The real reason I started this post was this article by Emil Danielyan, and especially this section from it:

[...]Yerevan may also have reason not to be worried about negative Western reaction to a repeat of serious vote irregularities, despite stern election-related warnings issued by the United States and the European Union. According to U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matthew Bryza, Armenia and Azerbaijan are “very close” to reaching a long-awaited agreement to end the Karabakh conflict after the upcoming Armenian polls. The conflicting parties have been discussing a gradual settlement of the conflict that presumably requires policy continuity in both Baku and Yerevan. Assuming that they really see a chance for Karabakh peace this year, Western powers and Washington in particular will hardly challenge the legitimacy of a government that they hope will help to eliminate the main source of instability in the South Caucasus.[...]

Rich Media, Poor Democracy - Overview

Journalism matters - not just to journalists but to everyone

The year started up bad for journalists in Armenia - even worse than the previous year, here's a troubling list of some of the recent events:

1. "...The three-and-a-half year jail sentence handed to the editor of “Zhamanak Yerevan” - Arman Babajanian..." RFE/RL.
   
2. "...The Toyota Prado belonging to Suren Baghdasarian of the “Football Plus” weekly and parked in a garage outside his central Yerevan apartment was completely destroyed by fire..." RFE/RL.
   
3. "...Arson attack on an expensive SUV belonging to Ara Saghatelian, the owner and editor of the “Im Iravunke” weekly..." (The photo and the quotes above all taken from the web site of RFE/RL).

Without going into much discussion as to who, why and how caused all these problems for the Armenian journalists (which was my initial intention when starting this post), I want to call on everyone in the Armenian public, to protect the journalists, even the very bad ones, and especially the good ones, as the authorities are clearly not doing their job of protecting journalists - those people so much necessary to scrutinize power in a democratic system. I could suggest, that on the contrary, the state is incouraging violence against the journalists if I only had facts, but as I don't - I'm not going to say that. I am only going to limit myself to appeal to the public and say: protect the journalists - from everyone, and especially from the state, for who will ask the questions when they're gone?

PS: I visited the newsroom of the Daily Telegraph yesterday and my reaction was WOW! No wonder these journalists are so dedicated to their work - they are a power in UK - real economic, political, social power... whearas fire and jail are the best reward for the best journalists in Armenia. Guess who will be more inclined to provide quality journalism to their readers?

Decadence - Democracy

On my quest to find What Democracy Means I keep getting more questions then answers. Today is my depression day - so I'll introduce you to the other side of democracy, to the Feeling of Liberal Western Democracy from inside...

Part 1

Part 2

From anticonsumer to an anticonsumer.

Hypocracy in Action... Anti-Election Observation Campaign of RA Government

Armenian authorities undertook two important steps, obviously geared towards achieving maximum transparency at the Parliamentary Elections 2007 in Armenia, scheduled for May 12, 2007. As you can see there are only 2251 hours, or 93 days remaining till the election, so I guess it was still too early for Mr. Goran Lenmark, special envoy on Nagorno Karabakh issue at the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly to try and meet the Armenian President Robert Kocharian in order to discuss the OSCE observation mission to be deployed in Armenia (why does Mr. Lenmark need to see Mr. Kocharian so early for? He doesn't need to discuss any organizational details for deploying over a hundred-people strong international monitoring mission and arranging all the logistics, etc, right? It's something that can be done overnight, so there's no rush). And I guess it is still too early for Armenian NGOs to try and register as local monitoring missions to the election, isn't it? Obviously Armenian authorities thought the same, because:

a/ "It is noteworthy that Lenmark’s meeting with RA President Robert Kocharyan didn’t take place as “the president wasn’t in Yerevan” in Lenmark’s words." - as A1plus reported yesterday.
b/ Central Electoral Comission rejected the bid for the "Supreme Committee" parliamentary club NGO to register a local monitoring mission to the elections (via RL/RFE)

I don't want to analyze the details of why each of these two things happened. The fact is in an environment, where the authorities are constantly speaking of transparency of elections you just don't treat observation missions like that. The fact is transparency, unobstructed access for everybody to see, monitor and contribute to the elections is one and only way to excersize Democracy, to have, as they are saying here in the UK "Democracy in Action". What I'm seeing at this point is more like "Hypocracy in Action..."

Exporting Democracy - A Global Fiasco

Armenianow.com had an interesting article "Present and Future Power Debate: Who will be the choices in 2008?" which examines the possible scenarios of political developments, probable candidates and the effects of these decisions on the political life in the country. However, all the arguments brought to and for this or that candidate in the article are most irrelevent to see the overall picture in the country. The one and only thing that got me interested was rather this one single point made by Washington D.C./Yerevan political analyst Richard Giragosian:

Representing a western-influenced viewpoint, Giragosian says the US has learnt a clear lesson from organizing the flower and color (“Rose” in Georgia; and “Orange” in Ukraine) revolutions in some CIS republics and concludes that imposed democracies do not work in countries where there are no truly democratic oppositions.

With too many other hot spots of unrest or tension – from North Korea to Darfur – the west, says the veteran analyst, welcomes stability.

“The process of importing American democracy has exhausted itself. Today both the US and Russia want to maintain stability in Armenia and the CIS. That context would suggest the US should endorse Serge Sargsyan’s candidacy for Kocharyan’s succession, because Sargsyan will be able to continue the current political and economic path,” Giragosian says.

The point is - small nations like us should always remember, that for big nations liek US, Russia there are no such things as values, human rights or democratic principles outside of their immediate state borders. The one and only thing moving the world powers is profit: economic, political, military gains, etc. I have said previously in my blog posts, that the Armenian people can only count on themselves if they really want democracy, because nobody else is going to come round helping us - as it is not in any global power's interests. We are too small to represent a market, we have no nuclear arms to pose dangers to their security, etc, etc...
The conclusion by the analysts kills me - it is so very true, but so utterly disgusting!

For the time being perhaps Armenia needs someone like Putin – with some dictatorial way of rule and the ability to eradicate corruption and the constantly increasing criminalization in the country.

The Armenian media landscape in the pretext of Parliamentary Elections; What is The Armenian Blogosphere? New Media vs. Old Media...

As the authoritarian control of traditional media intensifies in the context of the upcoming parliamentary elections, the blogs have an opportunity of filling in the vacuum of providing an “alternative viewpoint” and thus appealing to larger masses of readership. The situation, like always, is not that simple however. Although considerable progress was observed in the Armenian blogosphere during the past year, the blogs remain a niche type of media and with just a couple of exceptions, play no role whatsoever in formulating news agenda and participating in the democratic discourse in the country.

In the meanwhile, the incumbent authorities in Armenia are persistently pressurizing the traditional media, using a combination of hidden economic incentives and tax/legal pressures. The latest point can be illustrated by looking at the ownership and financing patterns of most media outlets in Armenia (some examples: Kentron TV owned by Gaguik Tsarukyan, AR TV by Hrant Vardanyan, H2 TV by Samvel Mayrapetyan), while contrasting that with recent cases against Arman Babajanyan editor of very oppositional newspaper and the newly imposed annual fee for servicing the broadcast frequency brought against Radio Companies, who enjoy a relative degree of economic freedom).

On January 23, at the plenary session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe of January 22-26 in Strasbourg, the Resolution 1532 (2007) on Armenia's honoring of obligations and commitments to CE was adopted, in which PACE stated (“The Assembly expects Armenia to demonstrate its capacity to hold the parliamentary elections in 2007 and the presidential elections in 2008 in accordance with international standards, not least with regard to pluralist, impartial media coverage of the election campaign,”) the importance of holding free and fair parliamentary elections in 2007, presidential elections in 2008, and stressed the importance of ensuring pluralist, impartial media coverage of the election campaign. Further on clause 6.2 of the Resolution notes that “a few months away from forthcoming parliamentary elections, the Assembly attaches special importance to pluralism of the electronic media”, since “equitable access by all political parties” to them is “an absolute prerequisite for the holding of free and fair elections”. On the same note Anthony Godfrey, U.S. Charge d'Affaires in Armenia who "warned today[on January 23rd] in Yerevan that his government would revise the decision to allocate a hefty $236 million in extra aid to Armenia if its authorities fail to hold free and just parliamentary elections, slated for May".

A number of widely recognized organizations have recently posted reports on the state of freedom and democracy in Armenia, in which the country repeatedly ranks among partly free, oppressive towards journalists, etc. (See reports by: Freedom House; Reporters without Borders; Global Integrity).The following conclusion of the Freedom House is especially worth mentioning: “Systematic efforts to control media in countries of the former Soviet Union have intensified in 2006 indicating further erosion of civil liberties.”

In the light of all of the above, it is especially important to observe the development of a new type of media: Blogging in Armenia. The number of well established and regularly updated blogs is more then 30 at this point (see the Armenian blogs list on the right side of this web page for some links), which means that there are more blogs, then there are websites for all other media outlets in the Armenian internet, counting newspapers, news agencies, radios, TV company websites taken together. Unlike the traditional media, blogging operates on the principles of independence, voluntary contribution, and anonymity if necessary, which renders a degree of protection to the authors. It is a form of publishing which is harder to control, and hence at this moment there are no widely recognized blogs in Armenia obviously controlled either by the government or by any other political force.

It is important to note, that according to the report made on December 19, 2006 by International Telecommunication Union the total number of internet users in Armenia makes up 150,000 people and the number is growing (Armenpress, Decembe 19 newsroll). Although a very small percentage of these 150,000 uses internet as their prime source of information (I couldn’t find any statistics, but my most optimistic estimate doesn’t exceed 5%), the online media as a whole have a huge potential readership, which is several times bigger then the circulation of the biggest printed Armenian newspaper (most print newspapers have an average "tirage" of 1000-2500 (don't confuse "tirage" - number of published units with circulation, as circulation in the case of Armenian newspapers is actually much lower then their "number of published copies"), while the biggest newspapers like: Aravot, Haykakan Zhamanak printa little more then 5000 copies daily).

One of the important characteristics of the online media is also its “on-demand” nature, which means, that when there are important events happening the use of online media increases dramatically. To make justice to the traditional media we have to note, that the last feature is obvious for them as well, but for the bloggers the growth is incremental. The example of Armenian writer, journalist Hrant Dink’s murder should be considered here. On the day of Dink’s murder and the days immediately following it the usage of blogs and online newspapers in Armenia doubled and tripled in many cases. This means, that when people are really looking for information they turn to the internet. It was also important to note, that people who had something to say about the tragedy preferred to go to the blogs, as they had the possibility of instantly commenting on the issue, whereas the traditional newspapers do not provide them with such possibilities. They do provide the possibility of writing “letters to editor” type of interaction, but it is clearly not as popular as the commenting feature of blogs and forums.

The following figures are a comparison of blogs vs. traditional media websites in the Armenian internet. The most popular English Language Armenian blog: Oneworld Multimedia for example gets 500 page-views per day at times; while most other English language blogs don’t get more then 50-80 page views per day. This does not include the pages/articles viewed using RSS/Atom XML feeds, which seriously decreases the actual number of page views of the blogs. The situation is rather different in the Russian language Armenian blogs, because they are based on LiveJournal, which enables the users to view other people's blogs inline at their own blog, using the Friends feature, so tracking actual page views is even more problematic.

Although the following comparison is not really compatible, because the concepts of pageviews and visitors are vastly different, the following figures could be looked at: Armenian Rating System Circle.am the most popular Armenian online media: A1plus gets 1700 visits per day on average; ArmeniaNow gets 600 visits on averageand Panorama.am barely passes the 400 ma on average.

Having said all of the above, I seem to have more questions, then answers. So here are some questions for discussion (although my page doesn't really have visitors, so expecting a discussion would be silly, wouldn't it?):

1. What do the bloggers see as their function in the Armenian media landscape? (Perhaps they see no function at all?)

2. What are the potentials for blogging to become an alternative channel for communication and public dialogue? (At this point looks like there are none!)

3. What are obstacles for the development of blogging? (expensive and low quality internet? No money via the Google Adwords?)

4. Why am I asking all this stupid questions? J (‘cause I’m looking for solutions, you see!)

PACE Resolution "Whip and Carrot Policy" for Armenia with "Carrots" prevailing

The whip today was the speech by Anthony Godfrey, U.S. Charge d'Affaires in Armenia (via Armenpress) who "warned today in Yerevan that his government would revise the decision to allocate a hefty $236 million in extra aid to Armenia if its authorities fail to hold free and just parliamentary elections, slated for May" once again, as we have been hearing several times already during the last couple of months.

And while the resolution adopted January 23 by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe literally reiterates the same thought (via PanArmenian.net)“The Assembly expects Armenia to demonstrate its capacity to hold the parliamentary elections in 2007 and the presidential elections in 2008 in accordance with international standards, not least with regard to pluralist, impartial media coverage of the election campaign,” we clearly saw more "carrots" in the PACE resolution then "whips" this time.

Indeed phrases like this one: “While acknowledging the progress made by Armenia towards compliance with its obligations and commitments, in particular since the adoption of the constitutional reform, the Assembly today decided to pursue its monitoring procedure until the current or proposed reforms in the fields of electoral law, the media and the justice system have produced tangible results,” are quite positive, and even the speach by the Head of «Justice» bloc Stepan Demirchyan stating that "although Armenia is reforming its Constitution, it is not enough: people must respect the Constitution and the Laws", as well as important reminders about the fact that "Armenia has not yet honored some of the commitments put forward by the PACE resolutions, particularly, independent TV Company «A1+» is still out of air" didn't change much of the overly positive attitude of the deputies. A potentially interesting point of view (although quite hostile as you might assume) on the issue can be found in the coverage of the APA: Azeri-Press Information Agency: as they quote Member of the Azerbaijani delegation Rafael Huseynov saying “The time, content and process of the discussions were organized so that it more resembled the meeting of Armenian parliament. No one from the Azerbaijani delegation was given the floor."

So what is going on? Is Armenia really progressing, and I, in my blind fury and dislike of authorities refuse to see it - or are the PACE just trying to be mild to Armenia for whatever reasons of their own. And then again, another matter to be speculated on is - do high level politicians at PACE think that they have ANY influence over the situation in Armenia, or are they just trying to be nice to what they see as "going" authorities and prefer not to spoil relations in the times very hard for Europe, as the issues of Energy Security and relations with rising Russia dominate the European agenda at all levels?

2006 Global Integrity Report Investigates and Assesses Anti-Corruption Mechanisms in 43 Countries, including the United States

2006 Global Integrity Report proved rather intersting. The report which places Armenia among the very week rating countries comes just a day after Armenia occupied a surprizingly high 32nd Place in World Rating of Economic Freedoms. Not to go into details about why I find the letter result so surprizingly high I'll just link to Onnik Krikoryan's post, where the matter is discussed at length.

As Armenia heads into the elections of May 2007, and in the context where absence of any ethical standards in government, inefficiency of the laws and practices designed to combat corruption and prevent abuses of power in the country prevail, the report by the Global Integrity undoubtedly provides information of wide public interest to Armenia.

The country uniformly ranks among countries with week and very week indicators as can be seen in the following indexes. And this time it's not the discredited Armenian opposition speaking, but rather the results of a major investigative report releasedby Global Integrity, an international nonprofit organization that tracks governance and corruption trends around the world.

“The mixing of money and politics continues to be a recipe for corruption in countries both rich and poor,” said Managing Director, Nathaniel Heller. “And yet, some nations have shown that, even with limited resources, political will and strong leadership can prove effective in addressing governance challenges.”

The Global Integrity report includes research and reporting from the following countries: Argentina, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Benin, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Georgia, Ghana, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Israel, Kenya, Kyrgyz Republic, Lebanon, Liberia, Mexico, Montenegro, Mozambique, Nepal, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Romania, Russia, Senegal, Serbia, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Sudan, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Uganda, the United States, Vietnam, the West Bank, Yemen, and Zimbabwe.

To access the 2006 Global Integrity Report, please visit the website at http://www.globalintegrity.org/.

Armenian Media Shape Up for The Election Battle

"Some things never change in this world" - the advanced internet user of today might think looking at the website of some major Armenian media outlets, like that of AZG daily Armenpress, Arminfo, and a number of others. Many of these guys have been going with the same interface for AGES (3 or more years). I mean - come on! In this world of rapidly changing internet technologies you don't do that!

But - there IS JUSTICE on this earth! Or there is A1plus; Panorama.am; Panarmenian.net and Yerkir Media for those who're loosing patience and hope. Yes - there is justice, and there is XML/RSS which the mentioned four sites happily provide the user (Yerkir Media's pretty cool - they've actually been putting online most of their news video content - now that's cool!). Moreover - A1plus have done their third redesign over the period of last 3 years, Panorama and Yerkir Media only recently did the second revamp - which considering their short period of existence (1,5 years for Panorama, and about 6-7 months for the Yerkir Media far as I can remember) implies serious investments. As to the Panarmenian.net - they are simply the first to adapt any new technology. Now - please observe - that I'm only discussing new web site designs (sometimes shifting from bad to worse as the case of Yerkir Media might be) and new technologies here. As for the content and quality of content feel free to join the discussion thread at Oneworld Multimedia.

One thing that nicely surprised me was the International Public Radio of Armenia and the new interface of Aravot.am called new.aravot.am. Among other things Iravunk have completely ruined their old design which was pretty good, the Second Armenian TV and Shant TV have introduced more ore less regular news postings starting from the end of December 2006. Armenia TV have something on TV that they call News - and starting this January they have introduced something that they call News to their website too. They have only posted January 11th news so far - so I guess that was a test launch or something.

What I'm hinting at is the fact, that all of a sudden many of the major Armenian media who seemed to live quite happily without ever remembering about things like Internet, and most of the pretty regular old ones are doing redesigns and introducing new features to their websites. I have vague suspicions, that it is all somehow related to the upcoming parliamentary elections. No? You don't think so? OK - tell me about it in the comments section :)

I know my little analysis is rather incomplete and biased, as is the list of Armenian Media Bookmarks I check fairly regularly and have uploaded to my blogs sidebar for everybody to use.

Issues in Democracy...

Had a round of introductions today on issues in Democracy for the whole group. As we had 12 presenters, the presentation had to be done in 5 minutes max, and had to include our vision of Democracy in the UK and Democracy Problems in our countries. Really really tight - isn't it? I had to choose carefully what to say and how to convey a more or less general picture. As we didn't really have time to prepare the little impromptu speech I made was rather one sided, still, I guess I ought to publish it here - for public shame and comments...

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Issues in Democracy

While UK, at least for myself, appears as the fore-post of democracy in the world, Armenia in line with a number of other former Soviet States, has become one of the labs where the huge Russian experiment on developing a form of Contained Democracy - a democratic imitation is undertaken.

Although lapses exist in various aspects of the Armenian legislation (constitution, electoral code, media regulation, freedom of information, freedom of meetings and gatherings), overall the Constitution and the Judicial System in the country are rather advanced - at least on paper. As I come to compare it with the UK which doesn't even have a constitution and US - where no direct electoral right is practiced for the Presidential elecitons, I can assure everyone here, that it's not the legislation that's causing the problems, but rather the unwillingness of the authorities to fully and effectively practice those laws and legislative preconditions to the benefit of democratic development in the country and in the inability of the people of Armenia to claim their constitutional rights and hold the authorities accountable. One of the biggest problems is that of good governence and the rule of law: laws are practiced selectively, or not practiced at all if such practice would mean limitations or enhanced accountability and transparency in the work of the authorities. On the surface elections, legislation seem to be satisfactory - but the reality is: the Armenian people are essentially deprived of their right to practice direct voting as a means for changing the government and thus having any influence on formulating the political agenda in the country.

A firm control over the major media outlets in the country, exploitation of administrative resources during the elections to guarantee favourable results for the incumbent government have become an increasingly threatening trait of the Armenian democracy - democratic immitation.

The existence of the powerful Armenian Diaspora abroad doesn't help much either. On the contrary, the desire of the Diaspora to protect "their country" and show it from the more favourable perspective in the eyes of the leading world powers: US, France, etc. contributes to the problems of democracy back home.

I don't have a solution to these problems, NOBODY DOES!

The Armenian people can't count on the assistance of the international community for ensuring their electoral rights and their rights to participate in the governing of their own country. The Armenian people can only count on themselves, and I come here with the hope to see how is it that the people of the UK are able to so effectively govern their country - even without a "proper" Constitution!!!