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Monitoring of Armenian Online Media Coverage: Pre-Election and Post-Election Periods, Silence Day, Elections Day (08 April ­- 20 May, 2012)

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 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).

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 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».

[[wysiwyg_imageupload:148:height=203,width=338]]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 – May 20, 2012).

Current report presents the results of monitoring concerning the period of official pre-election period (April 8 – May 4, 2012), the Silence Day (May 5), the Elections Day (May 6) and the two weeks post-election period.

10 Armenian online media outlets are

1in.am

7or.am

A1plus.am

Azatutyun.am (RFE/RL service in Armenia)

Civilnet.tv (.am)

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. 

Source: JNews.am