Interim Report on Monitoring of Armenian Online Media Coverage of May 6, 2012 Elections to RA National Assembly conducted by the Journalists for the Future NGO is possible to download HERE.
Introduction
This monitoring is conducted by the Journalists for the Future NGO (JFF) with the financial support of the Open Society Foundations-Armenia (OSF-Armenia).
There has been no research of online media conducted in Armenia during election processes. The need of such monitoring has risen during the recent 3-4 years with the increase of Internet users (30% of population) and the decrease of prices. The number of news-making websites increased too.
In 2007, during the Parliamentary elections there were less than 10 Armenian active online media outlets. Today, there are 224 websites registered only in the “News and Media” section of Circle.am rating system. The leading 50 websites have 1.000-150.000 visitors per day (Azatutyun.am and PanArmenian.Net news websites are not registered in this system).
Interim Report on Monitoring of Armenian Online Media Coverage of May 6, 2012 Elections to RA National Assembly conducted by the Journalists for the Future NGO is possible to download HERE.
Introduction
This monitoring is conducted by the Journalists for the Future NGO (JFF) with the financial support of the Open Society Foundations-Armenia (OSF-Armenia).
There has been no research of online media conducted in Armenia during election processes. The need of such monitoring has risen during the recent 3-4 years with the increase of Internet users (30% of population) and the decrease of prices. The number of news-making websites increased too.
In 2007, during the Parliamentary elections there were less than 10 Armenian active online media outlets. Today, there are 224 websites registered only in the “News and Media” section of Circle.am rating system. The leading 50 websites have 1.000-150.000 visitors per day (Azatutyun.am and PanArmenian.Net news websites are not registered in this system).
Expansion of social networks in Armenia also conduced to increasing the number of online media visitors. Especially in Facebook, almost all the Armenian websites have their corresponding page where they share the links of all articles from their website. For example, the News.am Facebook page has more than 50.000 «likes».
Despite the fact that TV remains the most required media in Armenia, online media outlets are already able to affect the news-forming of traditional media with the variety and efficiency of their information.
The current research will allow understanding the impartiality of online media in covering such an important social-political event in Armenia as parliamentary elections.
The aim of the research is to study Armenian online media coverage concerning parliamentary elections during the 3 months of pre-election period and 2 weeks after the elections (February 6 – June 20, 2012).
Current report presents the results of monitoring concerning the period of official pre-election promotion (April 8 – May 4, 2012).
10 Armenian online media outlets are
1in.am
7or.am
A1plus.am
Azatutyun.am (RFE/RL service in Armenia)
Civilnet.tv
Lragir.am
News.am
Tert.am
Panarmenian.net
Panorama.am
The choice of these websites was based on the data of the Circle.am rating system and the opinions of experts.
All the references concerning 9 parties/bloc participating in the elections by proportional electoral system and/or the first three persons in the proportional list of each party found in above-mentioned websites’ «News», «Politics», «Video» categories were registered and studied. If the livestreams of websites were recorded and published in the monitored categories of their websites, they were monitored too.
Overall, in the pre-election promotion period 5.369 articles/stories in 10 websites were registered.
There were 11.386 references about the parties/bloc.
The monitoring methodology is based on the analysis of quantity and quality indexes. These indexes are based on the data registered by observers.
Source: JNews.am
Interim Report is also possible to download from attached file. Please, see below