NEW MEDIA TOOLS PIERCE ARMENIAN, AZERIBAIJAN "INFORMATION WALL"

Transitions Online
Feb 2 2010
Czech Rep

A week before Azerbaijani youth activists and video bloggers Adnan
Hajizade and Emin Milli were arrested in July in Baku, an Armenian
hundreds of kilometers away in Yerevan posted a YouTube video on his
Facebook page.

The video, by Hajizade, introduced subscribers of the young Azerbaijani
activist’s online video channel to the now-vacant Armenian church
in Azerbaijan’s capital. The message was simple. It was a virtual
hand of friendship extended across a closed border and a 15-year-old
cease-fire line.

For Armenian Facebook users, this was their first exposure to an image
of the "enemy" at odds with that usually portrayed in local media.

With a peaceful resolution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict seemingly
as elusive as ever, Armenians and Azerbaijanis are unable to visit
each other’s country or communicate through traditional means such
as telephone or mail. Media in both countries frequently self-censor
or fall back on government propaganda when it comes to reporting on
the other nation.

The resulting stereotypes are not easily dislodged, even among those
critical of their governments. In a comment on her compatriot’s
Facebook page, one Armenian opposition activist expressed doubt
that there are others in Azerbaijan as tolerant and progressive as
Hajizade. A civil society organizer suspected Baku had simply invented
a dissident youth movement to score points with the Council of Europe.

Online platforms

But when Hajizade and Milli were detained for their other activities,
other Armenians discovered a whole network of young Azerbaijanis who
leaped to the bloggers’ defense on Facebook, Twitter, and other online
platforms. Their skillful use of social media attracted international
press attention to the case.

And, via Facebook, Azerbaijani activists learned that many of their
Armenian counterparts supported the campaign for Hajizade and Milli’s
release – not because the arrests made the Baku government look bad,
but out of genuine concern.

In Azerbaijan and Armenia, many journalists have effectively become
combatants in an information war of attrition. Media bias in the two
countries creates a "negative context" in the public mind that "hinders
dialogue and mutual understanding," the Caucasus Resource Research
Center stated last year in a report for the Eurasia Partnership
Foundation. "Without more accurate and unbiased information … free
of negative rhetoric and stereotypes, Armenians and Azerbaijanis will
continue to see themselves as enemies without any common ground."

In blogs and on social platforms, however, youth in both countries are
tentatively reaching out and breaching the information blockade. Those
who until recently contacted one another only in secret are now
communicating more openly, attracting others into their ranks.

"These new tools can be used to foment violence or to foster peace,"
Ivan Sigal, executive director of the blog aggregation site Global
Voices Online and a former researcher on citizen media at the U.S.

Institute of Peace, wrote in a 2009 paper on digital media in
conflict-prone societies. "[I]t is possible to build communication
systems that encourage dialogue and nonviolent political solutions."

In the past year, civil society groups that regularly convene
third-country meetings between Armenians and Azerbaijanis have started
taking note of what is happening online. (This author, for example,
was approached by two such organizations for Azerbaijani contacts in
online activist circles.) The open nature of the Internet makes it
an increasingly vital tool for identifying new participants in civil
society activities.

But two high-level diplomatic sources told me such groups have not done
enough to expand their networks in Armenia and Azerbaijan. And critics
in the social-media sphere say traditional civil society groups remain
as closed as ever, focused on maintaining a "monopoly on problems,"
as Slovene attorney and activist Primoz Sporar put it in a 2008 essay
for the Trust for Civil Society in Central and Eastern Europe.

In the South Caucasus, "a significant amount of civil society work …

reinforces status quo policies where governments profit from war and
exacerbate cultural differences to their advantage," says Micael Bogar,
a former Peace Corps volunteer in the region, now a projects manager
at American University’s Center for Social Media. "New media tools,
with their powerful and cheap ability to communicate across borders,
threaten [their] wasteful practices," she adds, and thus go largely
unexplored by more traditional groups.

Low internet penetration

Bogar cites the cross-border Hajizade/Mills campaign and a US project
to bring Armenian and Azerbaijani teenagers together online as success
stories. But access to the new tools remains an issue. Internet
penetration and connection speeds are still low in the region,
particularly in Armenia.

"While there is an elite element within civil society with access,
but no interest, there is an even larger pool of citizens within
the South Caucasus who may have the desire to work towards peace but
lack any real long-term ability to use these tools towards that end,"
Bogar says.

The International Research and Exchanges Board, a US nonprofit, has
identified the inability of local journalists to easily check facts
as a major obstacle to media development in Armenia and Azerbaijan. A
Caucasus Resource Research Center study recommends that the Millennium
Challenges Account – a US aid agency active in Armenia and Georgia,
among other countries – consider funding development of high-speed
Internet and the spread of Web 2.0 and mobile Internet technologies
to open opportunities for civil society initiatives.

But even existing tools and information infrastructure offer willing
journalists and activists accessible, low-cost ways to pierce the
information wall – using Skype or other online chat programs to
communicate directly with one another, for example, rather than
relying on government or media boilerplate.

Interaction on Facebook, Twitter, and other social sites sets
examples of Armenians and Azerbaijanis making and maintaining
normal, open contact, and allows participants in conferences and
other initiatives to get in touch before physically meeting and stay
connected long after their brief real-world encounters, something
that rarely happens now. Established blogs such as Armenian-American
journalist Liana Aghajanyan’s Ianyan and Baku-based regional analyst
Arzu Geybullayeva’s Flying Carpets and Broken Pipelines foster further
cross-cultural communication.

True, such small-scale outreach represents a drop in the ocean of
Azerbaijani-Armenian hostility now. But as Internet penetration
increases, bringing costs down and connection speeds up, alternative
routes for delivering information will grow – offering more chances for
alternative voices to find purchase, narrowing the space for partisan
disinformation in the mainstream media, and creating fertile ground
for genuine dialogue and an exchange of reliable, factual information.

Onnik Krikorian is a freelance photojournalist and writer in Yerevan.

He is also the Caucasus region editor for Global Voices Online and
writes from Armenia for the Frontline Club.

Funding for this project, "Overcoming Negative Stereotypes in the South
Caucasus," was provided by TOL and the British Embassy in Yerevan.