What Democracy Means has an interesting post on the shape of the media in the run-up to the 2007 parliamentary elections. It’s particularly interesting because of the way it examines the state of the print media and compares that to its online counterpart. This is also particularly relevant considering the fact that the authorities control all the TV stations.

[…] 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).

[…]

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.”

Comparing online media outlets with blogs, the picture is particularly interesting. I’ve made this point before, incidentally, and consider that this blog is respectfully holding its own against the English-language sections of Hetq Online and Armenia Now which not only have funding in excess of $100,000 a year each, but also have a staff.

I think this vindicates blogs as an important source of information in Armenia, especially as they represent individual opinion rather than the often hidden agendas of sometimes undisclosed funders. As Ditord says, expect blogging to come of age during these elections, and for readership to actually surpass the online media, perhaps with the exception of dedicated news agencies such as PanArmenian.Net, A1 Plus and Noyan Tapan.

Blogs may not have as much power as other outlets yet, but soon they will. I’m sure of it.

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.

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.

Anyway, as I stated in a comment I left on the original post, my current average page view is now higher than that which Ditord quotes. I’m now averaging 428 readers and 752 page views a day, and while I only had 341 readers yesterday, Hetq Online and Armenia Now had not much more when you consider they publish in multiple languages. According to Circle.am, yesterday they had 860 and 642 readers, respectively — for all their different language editions combined.

Regardless of what Hetq Online says on its web site, it is not attracting 110,000 readers per month — its own Circle.am counter puts the number at approximately 25,000. Of course, the question then begs to be asked as to why the situation for the online media is like this. As Ditord explains, the actual number of people using the Internet as a source of news is actually quite small, and this is also the case in the Diaspora when it comes to Armenia-related information.

This same argument also stretches to the print media.

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).

Otherwise, the very nature of blogs allows for comments to be left, and discussions to be initiated. Also, rather than media outlets in Armenia which are in fierce competition for scarce resources, a good blog will fit in with a larger blogosphere. Rather like word of mouth, new readers will be directed towards other blogs, including yours, by various search engines and links or referrals from other sites.

More than that, while the online media in Armenia relies on often hidden funders with certain agendas, a good blog also has to reveal and pride itself on its own transparent opinion. An even better blog will allow for a plurality of opinion from specialists as well as normal everyday people to sit side by side. They say the truth is somewhere in the middle, and for the Armenian media, this is particularly true. A proper blog manages to achieve that quite well.

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.

Anyway, I believe in the power of blogs, and I think that given the state of the local media in all its forms, they’re much needed. I also think they can ultimately prove to be more effective and more pluralistic and objective than traditional news reports. This shouldn’t be the case, of course, but in the current media environment in Armenia, it unfortunately is. Nevertheless, one thing’s for sure. This year will be when blogging comes of age in Armenia.

The original post from What Democracy Means is here.