Twitter Diplomacy
Can new media help break the Armenia-Azerbaijan information blockade?
by Onnik Krikorian

2 February 2010

This is the fourth in a series of reports on relations between ethnic
Azeris and Armenians that belie the tension between the two countries.
Previous multimedia reports focused on villages and urban districts in
Georgia where Azeris and Armenians co-exist. In this analysis Onnik
Krikorian explores how new media tools could foster ties between the
two groups. You can learn more about this project and see more photos
and video at TOL’s Steady State blog.

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.

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.

Bogar cites the cross-border Hajizade/Mills campaign and a U.S.
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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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.

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