With the February presidential election in Armenia drawing nearer with each passing day and week, and with the Internet increasingly playing an important role in disseminating information on elections the world over, it’s probably a good time to once again make available the Armenian-translation of Solana Larsen, Zephyr Teachout and Mary Joyce’s Election Blogging Guide.

Since its birth in the mid-nineties and its popularization at the turn of the millennium, blogging has been an intriguing platform for personal expression made public. While blogs (first called weblogs) began as online diaries, their uses, and the topics they cover, have been increasing ever since. Blogs have been forums for political speech almost since their inception, yet the full political potential of blogging has yet to be achieved. Election blogging is the next step in the realization of blogs as a tool for political activism. The 2004 American presidential election was the first election closely covered by bloggers. Now, bloggers around the world practice “election blogging” by writing about and commenting on election news.

What is the possible impact of election blogging? Election blogs are important media tools in all countries. However, it is in countries where political speech and press freedoms are limited that blogs have the most important role to play. Blogs, because they exist virtually, can afford to push the boundaries of speech further than broadcast and print journalists, which are more easily regulated by the government. Thus, blogs can act as alternative sources of information in an environment where officially-sanctioned media coverage is biased or incomplete. They can also act as free speech zones. Through comment threads, readers can anonymously discuss political topics they might not be willing to discuss in a non-digital setting. In this way, election blogs can become potent forces for journalistic independence, freedom of speech, government accountability, and active citizenship.

The Armenian translation can be downloaded in Word format (compressed as a .zip file). More blogging resources in English and other languages such as Russian can be downloaded from the NewEurasia site.