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02.12.2010

ALTERNATIVE AND TRADITIONAL MEDIA IN ARMENIA

   

Samvel Martirosyan

Global tendency of alternative and traditional media merging

Current development of the Internet brought on the one hand to competition between the alternative and traditional media and on the other hand to supplementing each other. Global experience of the recent years came to prove that the so-called civil journalism (which includes bloggers, the users of the social networks and other similar civil resources) in some situations appears to be more efficient than the traditional media1. Moreover, for traditional media social networks become an essential source of readers who pass by the links from other users of the networks.

In cases when on-line information on the spot is needed bloggers and the users of the social networks turn out to be more efficient than traditional media. The civil journalism is also more effective in places where the activity of the media is restricted for some reason or other. Thus, for example, over the period of confrontation between the authorities and opposition in Iran in 2009, the main sources of information from the streets where the encounters were taking place were the bloggers with their mobile phones2.

Such a development of communications brings to the integration of all the big traditional media with the sources of alternative journalism. It is mainly reflected in some elements:

  • Mass media use the environment of the alternative journalism as a source of information
  • For this purpose the specialists who have skills of obtaining efficient and, which is important, reliable information from the blogs and social networks are involved
  • Mass media open their blogs and boost blogging by their journalists
  • Mass media tend to increase their presence in social networks and blogs, to become newsmakers in this information environment, to become reliable sources of information.

Armenian traditional media at the crossroads

The same processes are taking place in the Armenian information field but with some time lag. Armenian media today actively try to integrate with the social networks and blogs. Almost the entire traditional press now works in the social networks in order to attain renown among the users of Facebook, Odnoklassniki.ru and etc.

For the Armenian media, especially printed press, social media become the only possibility to keep afloat. Taking into consideration the fact that most of the newspapers have a circulation from several hundred to several thousand copies, one may forecast that under such a tendency the printed press of the social and political orientation will be disappearing from the information field due to their uselessness and expensiveness (which does not correlate well enough with the scanty coverage of the audience and a weak impact on the society).

At the same time possibility to go on-line and then become a source of information is an opportunity for the Armenian mass media to “reborn”. At present moment many Armenian newspapers have almost equal share of audience in on-line and printed versions3. Taking into consideration the fact that the on-line version of newspaper is much cheaper and the potential readership on the Internet is much broader, transitions of their activity to the Internet becomes more and more topical for the traditional mass media.

Armenia in social networks

The Armenia Internet is now in the phase of bursting growth. Competition between mobile operators and internet connection providers caused an abrupt reduction of prices in the sector. In this regard the number of the Internet users is growing much faster than in 2008. Correspondingly, the growth of the number of the social networks’ users is also growing.

If we consider the situation with traffic of the Armenian information portals as compared with the traffic of the social networks and blogs the situations is quite an interesting. All the Armenian news resources registered on Circle.am rating system4 (these are almost all the main actors – about 150 sites) have about 170 thousand visitors per day5. And only 43% of visitors are from Armenia.

Thus, according to the data of Ditord.com there are 450 thousand registered users of Odnoklassniki.ru social network in Armenia6. Odnoklassniki still remains the most popular social network in Armenia. There are about 200 thousand users from Armenia registered in VKonakte,Ru7.

At the same time the most actively developing network in Armenia today is Facebook – the biggest global social network. Here the number of the users from Armenia is about 80 thousand. And the growth of the number of the users is approximately 10-15% per month.

If in the quantitative aspect Facebook still drops behind Odnoklassniki seriously, in the aspect of activity quite an opposite situation can be observed, According to the data of alexa.com, which carries out monitoring of the Internet users all over the world, at the end of August Facebook outstripped Odnoklassniki in the aspect of the generated traffic in Armenia (according to the statistics Facebook takes second place after Google, and Odnoklassniki is on the third place)8.

Facebook has turned into a tool of the civil activity for the socially active part of the population. Such civil initiatives as the movement against the demolition of the open-air hall of “Moscow” cinema and the movement against opening of the foreign language schools were initiated through Facebook and blogosphere. The group which struggles against destruction of green zones in Yerevan also coordinates its activity through Facebook. Those groups are numerous and they are a source of serious civil activity which opinion is taken into consideration by both government and political powers in Armenia:

  • SAVE Cinema Moscow Open-Air Hall – 6600 registered members9
  • Մե՛նք ենք այս քաղաքի տերը (We are the masters of our city) – 3670 registered members10
  • Մենք դե՛մ ենք օտարալեզու դպրոցների վերաբացմանը (We are against re-opening of foreign language schools in Armenia) – 3250 registered members11

To compare, the audience of such groups can be compared with the Armenian audience of main Armenian on-line news resources. Correspondingly, informational value of such groups on definite issues sometimes becomes qualitatively higher than the one of the traditional mass media. At the same time it becomes important for the press to be presented in such groups as a source of information which allows increasing audience.

1See: «УВЕЛИЧЕНИЕ РОЛИ СОЦИАЛЬНЫХ СЕТЕЙ В ИНФОРМАЦИОННОМ ПОЛЕ», Самвел Мартиросян, http://noravank.am/rus/articles/detail.php?ELEMENT_ID=4623

2See: «ИРАН – ИСПОЛЬЗОВАНИЕ АЛЬТЕРНАТИВНЫХ КОММУНИКАЦИЙ», Самвел Мартиросян, http://noravank.am/rus/articles/detail.php?ELEMENT_ID=2524

3See: Посещаемость основных армянских СМИ в рейтинговой системе Circle - http://www.circle.am/?cat=news&for=today&by=visits

4http://www.circle.am/?go=catinfo&cat=news

5Visiting of the site by the same user in 30 minutes is considered as a new visit.

6http://ditord.com/2010/08/31/facebook-overtakes-odnoklassniki-as-armenias-top-social-network

7http://vkontakte.ru/ads.php?act=union_create_ad

8http://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries/AM

9http://www.facebook.com/?sk=2361831622#!/group.php?gid=343138923439

10http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=119537174725392

11http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=112426852127161

"Globus National Security", issue 6
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