06 Mar

Protest attitudes in the Caucasus

Attitudes toward protest is one of my favorite Caucasus Barometer questions.

(Sarah Kendzior and I wrote a piece centered around this measure in 2012).

It is an interesting way to ask a question in a vignette format.

People are asked which statement they agree with and degree.

* Very much agree: People should participate in protest actions against the government, as this shows the government that the people are in charge.
* Agree: People should participate in protest actions against the government, as this shows the government that the people are in charge.
* Neither
* Agree: People should not participate in protest actions against the government, as it threatens stability in our country.
* Very much agree: People should not participate in protest actions against the government, as it threatens stability in our country.
* Don’t know

And with all of the exciting events in the Caucasus recently I was curious as to how people feel. And the analysis did not disappoint.

The collapsed analysis is a bit easier to follow. Two-thirds of Armenians think that it is okay to protest. 20% think it is not okay.
In Georgia, a little over half think that it is okay to protest, 17% think it is not okay.
And then Azerbaijan – 29% think it is okay and 43% do not think that it is okay.

protest collapsed

And non-collapsed is here.

collapsed

05 Mar

What are Armenians, Azerbaijanis, and Georgians doing online?

This demonstrates the percent of Internet users and percent from the total adult population that are engaging in particular online activities. To see more on general Internet, check this out.

This year there was no separation of Facebook and Odnoklassniki. I am under the impression,  however, that Facebook has sort of taken over.
armactivities

azactivities

Music and videos seem to be especially popular in Azerbaijan.

geactivities

Most Georgian Internet users are on a social networking site.

 

05 Mar

Armenian election attitudes

There was an election in Armenia, you may have heard.

The Caucasus Barometer asked people in November 2012 a number of questions, including some feelings about government and voting.

(Here’s some 2010 analysis on elections for comparison.)

Most Armenians voted in the last election.

election

And people weren’t sure if it was fair.

fair

And most Armenians said that they’d vote in the presidential election.

pres

 

What do Armenians think is the biggest problem? Mostly unemployment.

problem

And trust in institutions, where there is low trust in political parties and the court system.

trust

Fairness is an issue, as most Armenians don’t think that their government treats citizens fairly.

fairly

And what about protests? Most Armenians think that people should be allowed to protest against the government.

protests

01 Mar

Facebookistan.am, Facebookistan.az, Facebookistan.ge in 2012

fb

This is an update to this post about 2011. 2012 overall Internet use here.

All data is from the Caucasus Barometer.

We know that a larger percentage of Armenians (52%) and Georgians (43%) are online than Azerbaijanis (27%) and weekly or more often adult Internet users are 43% of Armenians, 33% of Georgians, and 19% of Azerbaijanis.

Armenia has 3,100,236 people, Azerbaijan 9,168,000 people, and Georgia 4,486,000 people – but that’s total population, we need to look at just adults (since that’s the data we have about Internet use – I fully acknowledge that teenagers are online and may be using social media). According to the World Bank, 20% of Armenians, 21% of Azerbaijanis, and 17% of Georgians are ages 0-14.

So, let’s take them out of the equation – (that’s 620,047 Armenians, 1,925,280 Azerbaijanis, and 762,620 Georgians) – and you have “adult” populations of 2,480,189 AM, 7,242,720 AZ, and 3,723,380 GE. So raw weekly or daily Internet users would be:

744,057 in 2011 and 1,289,698 in 2012 Armenia
941,554 in 2011 and 1,376,117 in 2012 Azerbaijan
1,042,546 in 2011 and 1,228,715 in 2012 Georgia

Thus in 2012, there are about 1.2-1.4 million weekly or daily Internet users in each country, with Azerbaijan having the most in raw numbers, despite the lowest percentage.

map_caucasus

In 2011, 6% of Armenians, 7% of Azerbaijanis, and 9% of Georgians (ADULTS) were on Facebook (let’s leave Odnoklassniki out of this for now). In 2012, 27% of Armenians, 13% of Azerbaijanis, and 30% of Georgians were on a social networking site.

Raw numbers then would be:

148,811 in 2011 and 669,651 in 2012 in Armenia
506,990 in 2011 and 941,554 in 2012 in Azerbaijan
335,104 in 2011 and 1,117,014 in 2012 in Georgia

map_caucasus

—

Socialbakers.com is a website that gives Facebook statistics. I’m not very comfortable using it because of its lack of transparency and because we don’t know where they get any of their data, but let’s see what they say.

ARMENIA
Total Facebook Users     395340 — I have 669,651 adults, so this seems off (although Odnoklassniki could be a factor)
Position in the list     112
Penetration of population     13.32% — I have 27% of adults
Penetration of online population     29.06% — I have 53% of adults

AZERBAIJAN
Total Facebook Users     1013080 — I have 941,554 adults, so this seems reasonable
Position in the list     82
Penetration of population     12.20% — I have 13% of adults, so this seems a little low for total population
Penetration of online population     23.97% — I have 50% of adults, so this seems really off

GEORGIA
Total Facebook Users     969840 — 1,117,014 adults, so this seems fairly close
Position in the list     85
Penetration of population     20.95% — I have 30% of adults, so this is off
Penetration of online population     82.84% — I have 70% of adults, so this seems okay

In the future I’ll look at socialbaker’s gender and age breakdown and see if it matches with what comes from the Caucasus Barometer.

—

(This is a copy and paste from what I wrote about 2011, but I wrote it in winter 2012.)

Okay, so back to my original point — I’ve noticed that the Azerbaijani Facebook and Twitter worlds is substantially more active than the Armenian one. (I acknowledge that I’m not up on what is going on in Georgia, but for reasons explained below, you’ll see that it is probably similar to Armenia). Why is this?

1. The raw numbers noted above — a lot more Azerbaijanis are on Facebook than Armenians. (I’m going to leave these countries’ diasporas out of this, but for what it’s worth, I feel like the Azerbaijani diaspora engages with Republic of Azerbaijan citizens more than Armenian diaspora do with Republic of Armenia citizens).
2. Because of the lack of free expression and assembly in Azerbaijan, most political discussion takes place on Facebook. Armenians can do this fairly freely in cafes or homes. Similarly, Armenians can organize and be political active in ways that Azerbaijanis cannot.
3. Language is a big part of this. As I wrote before, users of the Azerbaijani language are at a serious advantage over users of Armenian or Georgian because Azerbaijani uses the Latin script. This is also a special concern when it comes to Twitter and even more so when it comes to mobile phones (only the most recent Android OS has Armenian and Georgian, iPhone has it, but the others? No way). But my overall point is that there are barriers to Armenians and Georgians using these sites.
4. This is entirely speculative, but I get the sense that Bakuvians are just way more wired than Yerevantsis are. The Baku social media scene, beyond politics, is always jumpin’! There are a ton of Azerbaijani Instagrammers, Pinteresters, and other social media platform users. I just don’t see that same sort of scene in Yerevan. Yes, there is a bit of a FourSquare scene and of course people use these social media sites, but not to the extent that I see in Azerbaijan. (Although this may be a result of the sheer numbers!!)

I’m sure there are other reasons, and I’d love to hear comments…

28 Feb

New Caucasus Internet Stats!

Hoorah! It is finally time to release the new Caucasus Internet statistics from the Caucasus Barometer. The data is publicly released on March 1.

I have a TON of posts ready to share. I’ll cover activities, regions, gender, means of access, but let’s start with the basics…

As always, I welcome comments and questions.

map_caucasus

As usual, let’s recall that this is merely for adults (certainly there are a lot of teenage users!), but the ownership statistics do reflect households, so it is more inclusive of young people.

Also, as I discussed here, survey data is better than ITU or industry data.

So, let’s get on with it!!

First, let’s look at how many people ever use the Internet. This is not as important as frequent Internet use (because who cares if someone used the Internet once last year, right? That’s not the same as someone that uses it every day.) However, people seem to really care about this.

everuse

As of 2012, over half of Armenians, 43% of Georgians, and over a quarter of Azerbaijanis have ever used the Internet. Armenia made quite the jump this year. Notably, there was no increase in Azerbaijan.

Daily Internet use is a more important category – these are people that are potentially getting a lot out of the Internet.

dailyusertrends

As you can see, a third of Armenians, a quarter of Georgians, and 11% of Azerbaijanis use the Internet daily. Armenia has been making quite large jumps each year since 2009.

I also like to do a combination of weekly and daily users that I call “frequent Internet users” — while a weekly user isn’t reaping the benefits that a daily user could, certainly a weekly user is different from a monthly user! A monthly user is much more like someone that never uses, in my opinion.

frequentusers

43% of Armenians, a third of Georgians, and nearly 20% of Azerbaijanis are online at least weekly. This means that most Internet users are using a lot, which is a bit of a change from the past.

Now, looking at frequency distributions for just 2012.

inetfreq

As I mentioned above, the less-than-weekly users are fairly insignificant this year. But more importantly, the “never” used (which in this illustration I added the “I don’t know what the Internet is”), is still quite high in some countries.

Let’s look more closely at Azerbaijan’s frequency distribution over the past few years.

azfreqtrends

While there has been about a 10% drop in those that never use the Internet between 2009 and 2012 (and the bulk of that drop was between 2011 and 2012) and the percentage of daily users has doubled between 2009 and 2012, this is still fairly slow growth. (I get into some of the reasons for this in this article.)

—

What about ownership? Let’s look at some trends.

Household Internet connection ownership (this does not include mobile Internet – I’ll deal with that in a forthcoming blog post) grew in all 3 countries this year.

homeinternetown

Nearly half of Armenian homes have an Internet connection with some major growth this year! (I’ll look at regional differences in a forthcoming blog post as well.) A third of Georgian homes have Internet and 17% of Azerbaijani homes have Internet.

Unsurprisingly then, these homes have a personal computer.

pcown

Elsewhere I argue that since 2008 when netbooks became available for a fairly cheap price, access to a computer is greater. Over half of Armenian homes, 40% of Georgian homes, and 21% of Azerbaijani homes have a computer. In all 3 countries, there was a pretty large jump from 2011.

And mobile phone ownership has essentially hit the entire population in all 3 countries now.

mobileown

26 Feb

Khojaly hashtag analysis

There is currently a campaign “Justice for Khojaly.” I wish that I could link to wikipedia or some other source with confidence, but this issue is so fraught with tension, it is very difficult to find a neutral source.

With that being said, here’s the wikipedia.

So lots of Azerbaijanis have been tweeting about this. So much that there were over 1500 tweets in the last few hours alone.

Here’s the analysis.

nodexl

You can see on the far left a lot of people who are not networked with anyone else but tweeted the word Khojaly. But then you can also see a number of clusters of people who do follow ecah other.

Top 10 Vertices, Ranked by Betweenness Centrality — so this means, who are the MOST NETWORKED people in the analysis:
ceyhunosmanli
AzNewsNetwork
nurana21
HDNER
GNLZYNALOVA
fuadshahbazov
elmanabdullayev
FidanKerimova3
Ziya_Meral
Elnur_Z

Top Tweeters in Entire Graph — this is who tweeted the most:
fhhknews
PeedroDionisio
kardeleniye
erolmaras
MankeErich
googlyfish_ca
news_az
todayaz
barbarosturpcu
Alibey_Aze

Honestly, I don’t know anything about any of these accounts so I can’t contextualize much, but I figured that people would be interested.

26 Feb

Dear Raffi.

Dear Raffi.

Congratulations! You’re really doing it! The crowds are growing.

First, I’m sorry that I was so skeptical. I was skeptical back when you were hunger striking. I didn’t really get what you were striking about. And I did giggle at the image of you with that blanket.
raffi hunger strike

And my basic attitude toward this 2013 election was SSDD.

But somehow you did it! And I’m thrilled for you.

Second, let me tell you what I like about you.

You LOVE Armenia. You really do. I can’t think of anything that you’ve ever done that was not out of pure love for Armenia. You moved there in 1990, FFS. You raised your kids there, even during the tough times. Not a lot of diasporans did that. Also your wife seems really cool and Orran (a center for street children to go for food, tutoring, hygiene, etc.) is one of my very favorite organizations and has been for years.

And wow – you have somehow managed to stay really clean. This is not easy in Armenia.

Also, you’re smart. From one PhD to another, I am virtually high fiving you.

And I really like that you’re engaging people in the regions in your movement. That is super smart. Well done.

But Raf jan, we need to talk about something…

WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU THINKING IN TERMS OF FOREIGN POLICY?

Let me copy and paste from a blog post that I wrote last weekend (and change the pronouns!)…

You seem to want diplomatic relations between Armenia and Turkey. (Here‘s more on his thoughts on this.) This is a 2009 piece you wrote on this. But then, more recently during your 2011 hunger strike, you had a list of 15 demands including No to [the Armenian-Turkish] Protocols, yes to Homeland. So if you don’t want the protocols, what’s your idea for establishing relations?

Oh yes, now I remember what you think about establishing relations, in this 2012 piece you wrote you said “Reconciliation between the Turkish and Armenian nation-states must, and will, take place based on the triumph of truth, however terrible, and the delivery of justice anchored in earnest remorse, meaningful restitution, and a guaranteed reconnection between the Armenian people and their patrimony. To this end, we remember our martyrs, salute all who prevent and punish crimes against humanity, and await Turkey’s true redemption.”

These are some pretty strong demands to come into negotiations with.

Then then you said this in 2013: “By 2015, either the border between Armenia and Turkey will be opened without preconditions, or on April 24 in Tsitsernakaberd we will sound our preconditions to Turkey. A major priority of our political agenda will be genocide recognition, compensation to relatives of victims, the guaranteed return of descents of the Armenians affected by the genocide to their land, and a new agreement on the delimitation of the Armenian-Turkish border, based not on the Bolshevik-Turkish acts of 1921 but on the modern international law”.” (The author of this article calls you irresponsible for saying this.)

So, you want genocide recognition to be a major priority of the political agenda of the Republic of Armenia?

I’m sorry, but there are about a billion more important things than this, IMHO, Raffi jan.

So, to move onto your ideas about Karabakh — which, IMHO, is more important than Turkey… You wans NK to be independent like Kosovo. (Here you are during your 2011 hunger strike, with your list of 15 demands including Recognition of Artsakh.)

But, then Raffi you went to Baku last year and said some cray-cray stuff (text here).

“1) Azerbaijan launches a failed war of aggression against Mountainous Karabagh and its freedom-loving people, as well as against its own minorities living in its midst, and then blames the self-defenders for that failure;”

Opening with this might not be the best diplomatic strategy.

“2) Azerbaijan pursues an official policy of intentional destruction of cultural heritage, and most particularly the daylit destruction in December 2005 of thousands of hand-crafted khatchkars (cross-stones) at the medieval Armenian cemetery at Jugha, Nakhichevan-not as collateral damage of war, but 11 years after the ceasefire and hundreds of miles away from the conflict zone-and ever since has blocked all international missions to the site of this shameful desecration;”

Yeah, looks like you’ve spent some time on the Internet.

“3) Azerbaijan continues to release and glorify convicted axe-murderers for the sole reason that the victim is Armenian, without even one voice of condemnation of this cowardly act of hatred in what the founder of ICAPP has referred to as “this inclusive democracy”; and”

Wait – there were multiple axe murderers?

“4) Azerbaijan, in a redundant war of words and terminologies, throws about at meetings such as this the loaded language of “occupation,” when in reality it was liberation, decolonization and everybody’s right to self-determination, and when “occupation” in fact applies most appropriately to Azerbaijani and Turkish control-through genocide, ethnic cleansing, and then the shame of official denialism – of large swathes of the Armenian patrimony from Shahumian and Nakhichevan to the western reaches of the Armenian Plateau.”

Well, one man’s occupation is another man’s liberation.

“Peace, security, and reconciliation are possible, however, when we all live by the same standards:
1) achievement of good, self-critical governance, public accountability, and the assumption of responsibility for safeguarding the equal civil rights and human dignity of our own constituents, opposition parties, non-governmental organizations, and minorities;”

Okay, I dig this.

“2) empowerment of the average citizen, civil society, and true democracy, not rule by dynasty or dictatorship;”

I like this too.

“3) recognition of the liberty, sovereignty, and integrity of all states, old and new, including the Republic of Mountainous Karabagh, whose return to the status quo ante is impossible, but rather whose recognition within its constitutional frontiers will enable a simultaneous, multilateral, and reciprocal right of return for all refugees of all nationalities-not only the displaced Azerbaijanis, but also the more than half million Armenian deportees from Shahumian, Nakhichevan, Artsvashen, and Azerbaijan proper, together with the descendants of the victims and survivors of the great genocide and national dispossession of the Armenian people;”

RAFFI, WTF? WTF? WTF?

“4) protection of all cultural heritage and condemnation of all desecration of that heritage, whether Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, Christian, or other;”

Ummm… okay.

“5) prevention and punishment of all genocides and crimes against humanity; and”

Prevention yes… punishment, you need to contextualize this a bit.

“6) the exercise of humanity and upholding of the common understanding that pain and suffering are universal and, in this connection, due remembrance of the thousands of righteous Turkish neighbors who demonstrated these virtues in saving Armenian lives, including my grandmother’s, during the Genocide of 1915, as well as the hundreds of Azerbaijanis of good conscience who attempted to do the same during the anti-Armenian pogroms in Sumgait and Baku decades later.”

Again, Raffi, WTF?

So, Raffi… I don’t want to insult you, but seriously, your foreign policy sounds like it was written after the 13-year-old AYF (Dashnak youth group) basketball tournament.

Foreign policy is, perhaps tied with economic reform and ending corruption, so important to Armenia. You can’t have such a simplistic view.

My sincere hope is that you have some smarter people around you that are going to tell you to STFU more often. Right now you’re sounding pretty crazy.

In closing, I REALLY want to be able to support you and your movement because I passionately want a more democratic Armenia. But this foreign policy stuff makes it incredibly hard for me to entirely support you.

If you have a spare minute, please let me know if you have some plans for foreign policy that don’t sound completely nuts.

Thanks a ton,
Your pal,
Katy

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