Tag Archives: armenia

25 Mar

Facebook in Armenia, March 2020

It has been awhile since I last blogged about Facebook use in the Caucasus. Again, here is a guide to how I get these data. Click on the tags for previous rates – here’s September 2017, here is May 2018. Here is December 2018.

As of March 2020, there are about 1,500,000 Facebook users in Armenia, according to Facebook. That is 50% of the total population, and 46% of the population over age 14 (Facebook technically isn’t available to those under 13.) There is a bit of growth since December when Facebook ads estimated 1,400,000 users (47% of the population).

As far as gender, 50% of the total male population, or 64% of males over age 14 are on Facebook. 53% of the total female population, or 49% of the female 14+ population. So there are some gender differences, but probably within the margin of error.

Just looking at the 15-24 year olds, 82% of them are on the site (this is a drop from 2 years ago — I suspect people have moved to Instagram), 82% of young men and 87% of young women.

Some trends to look for – as in the rest of the world, young people are moving more toward Instagram. Everyone is moving toward WhatsApp and other private messaging services.

25 Mar

2017 Internet access in Armenia

With the move toward online learning all over the world, someone asked me about Internet access in Armenia. The most recent publicly available data that we have is from the 2017 Caucasus Barometer. Here are a few relevant statistics. Please note that the survey respondents are a mix of household answers (like owning a computer) and individual answers (frequency of Internet use), so we are making some methodological leaps in claiming that this would reflect the access that young people would have.

It is difficult to ascertain the presence of children in the household using the Caucasus Barometer online analysis tool. When I have some time I will create a variable that subtracts the number of adults in the household from the total number of household residents to create a new variable called “Number of children” — I’d like to use that to look at all of the analyses described below in the future.

Another caveat – in homes across the world, adults working from home are having to share their technology with their children. There may also be greater demands on home Internet access and adult work use becomes prioritized over children’s.

Analysis

Overall, 29% of Armenia adults never access the Internet. This has remained fairly stable for the past few years. The 2017 CB did not ask about why people did not use the Internet, but in previous years, the answered varied and were not all tied to resource access issues.

Home Internet access is far more available in the capital city, although mobile Internet (and nearly two-thirds of Armenians have mobile Internet) certainly bridges that gap for many households.

Nonetheless, in 2017, over a third of rural respondents never accessed the Internet.

Mobile Internet does vary a bit by urbanness. Two-thirds or nearly two-thirds of Yerevan residents and regional urban center residents have mobile Internet, while a little over half of rural residents do.

While mobile phones have come a long way (and nearly all Armenians have owned a mobile phone for over a decade), no one can deny that some activities are conducted more easily using a personal computer. As of 2017 58% of households had a computer. This does not mean that people do not have access to computers at cafes, work, or school. However, in terms of considering distance learning or working from home, the lack of a computer may be a barrier for some.

Urbanness has always been an important part of the Armenian digital divide story. Personal computer ownership is far higher in the capital (67%) than in regional urban environments (56%) or rural areas (51%).

04 Dec

Facebook in Armenia, December 2018

fb

It has been awhile since I last blogged about Facebook use in the Caucasus. Again, here is a guide to how I get these data. Click on the tags for previous rates – here’s September 2017, here is May 2018.

As of December 2018, there are about 1,400,000 Facebook users in Armenia, according to Facebook. That is 47% of the total population, and 43% of the population over age 14 (Facebook technically isn’t available to those under 13.) There is a bit of growth since May 2018 when Facebook ads estimated 1,200,000 users (40% of the population), but I would be cautious to attribute this to the Velvet Revolution. About 100,000 new Armenians join Facebook each quarter or so anyway.

As far as gender, 44% of the total male population, or 57% of males over age 14 are on Facebook. 48% of the total female population, or 49% of the female 14+ population. So there are some gender differences, but probably within the margin of error.

Just looking at the 15-24 year olds, 87% of them are on the site, 86% of young men and 92% of young women. These numbers have been fairly steady for a few years, with many young women on the site for awhile. 2016 seemed to be the big leap here.

Some trends to look for – as in the rest of the world, young people are moving more toward Instagram. Everyone is moving toward WhatsApp and other private messaging services.

09 May

Facebook in Armenia, May 2018

fb

It has been awhile since I last blogged about Facebook use in the Caucasus. Again, here is a guide to how I get these data. Click on the tags for previous rates – here’s September 2017.

As of May 2018, there are about 1,200,000 Facebook users in Armenia, according to Facebook. That is 40% of the total population, and 37% of the population over age 14 (Facebook technically isn’t available to those under 13.)

As far as gender, 40% of the total male population, or 51% of males over age 14 are on Facebook. 43% of the total female population, or 49% of the female 14+ population. So there are some gender differences, but probably within the margin of error.

Just looking at the 15-24 year olds, 87% of them are on the site, 82% of young men and 92% of young women. (These numbers dropped a bit since last September).

30 Apr

Political change in Armenia

Armenia experienced its most profound political change since becoming independent when former President and briefly Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan resigned. Sargsyan served two terms as president of Armenia, but in 2015, he changed the constitution which moved Armenia from a semi-presidential system to a parliamentary one. Then, despite promising otherwise, he was elected Prime Minister by his party immediately after his last presidential term ended this month.

This sparked a protest organized by opponents to Sargsyan, opposition coalition Yelk (Way Out), but mostly the Civil Contract Party. These efforts were lead by charismatic multilingual 42-year-old opposition MP Nikol Pashinyan. Pashniyan is no newcomer, he has been battling Sargsyan for a decade.

I’m writing about the protests in other venues, but one of my main points is that Armenians were READY for this. Here are some analyses from the Caucasus Barometer to support this. (The CB has some nice online data analysis tools, but I made my own graphics to show some points better visually).

Armenians don’t trust Sargsyan [link to CB].

This line graph shows that the trust/distrust threshold was crossed in 2010 and for the past few years, very few Armenians trusted Sargsyan and many distrusted him.

This is a bar graph version of above. You can see that trust basically swapped.

Similarly, people were unhappy with the direction that politics were going on [link to CB].

Although don’t knows and refuse to answers were high, in the past few years, very few Armenians felt that the country was going in the right direction.

Armenians have been fairly consistent in their opinion about Armenia being a democracy [link to CB].

Election fraud and manipulation was widely connected with Sargsyan and the CB shows it [link to CB].

Additionally, Armenians are pretty keen on criticizing their government and protesting against it. [Link to CB on being critical] [Link to CB on protest]

Also, compared to Azerbaijan and Georgia, Armenians are especially keen on these things. (These are from the 2013 CB, the last that compared all 3 countries – critical, protest).

….

Added May 1 – trust toward Parliament [link to CB]

04 Dec

Armenia – 2015 sources of information

The EBRD Life in Transition survey changed their wording on this question quite a bit this wave, so it is difficult to compare to the past. But here I present the frequency of Armenians using various media as an information source.  The question says: “People use different sources to learn what is going on in their country and the world. For each of the following sources, please indicate how often you use it:” with a variety of choices from never to daily.

Not surprisingly, TV rules. Magazines aren’t very popular in Armenia.

04 Dec

Frequency of using the Internet and social media as an information source in Eurasia, 2015

The EBRD Life in Transition survey changed their wording on this question quite a bit this wave, so it is difficult to compare to the past. But here I present the frequency of Eurasians using the Internet and social media as an information source.  The question says: “People use different sources to learn what is going on in their country and the world. For each of the following sources, please indicate how often you use it:” with a variety of choices from never to daily.

This is Internet

and social media

It is hard to say if people understood the difference between the Internet and social media. I’d guess that they did not. I eyeball’d the crosstabs and it seems that the nevers in both groups are pretty heavily overlapping.

And, of course, anyone that knows anything about media consumption knows that the vast majority of people get their news from TV. Nonetheless, I wanted to also provide a bit of context for the South Caucasus, Russia, and Turkey. If you’re interested in other countries, please contact me.

More to come!

04 Dec

PC/tablet ownership in Eurasia in 2015

A few years ago I made some graphics and a blog post showing personal computer ownership in Europe and Eurasia based on the EBRD’s Life in Transition survey.

Last week I presented these data to some graduate students and that reminded me that I should update this! There are 2015-2016 data available and the picture has changed quite a bit. Also, notably, the question wording changed. Now people are asked if anyone in their household owns a personal computer, laptop, or tablet and if they don’t is it because they cannot afford it or for another reason. I present both here.


Link to the original image

01 Sep

Facebook in Armenia, September 2017

I’ve written some blog posts in the past where I explain how I use Facebook ads to estimate how many Facebook users there are in a particular country. Here’s a September 2017 update for Armenia!

As of September 2017, there are about 1,100,000 Facebook users in Armenia, according to Facebook. That is 37% of the total population, and 34% of the population over age 14 (Facebook technically isn’t available to those under 13.)

As far as gender, 36% of the total male population, or 46% of males over age 14 are on Facebook. 40% of the total female population, or 49% of the female 14+ population. So there are some gender differences, but probably within the margin of error.

Just looking at the 15-24 year olds, 89% of them are on the site, 82% of young men and 97% of young women.