Tag Archives: azerbaijan

22 Sep

Please help support our research project

I am incredibly lucky to have some amazing research collaborators and friends. For the project that I’m about to describe, I’m working with three women who rock my world. Two of them are also academic mommies of young kids (together we have 5 kids under age 6), two are non-native English speakers working in English at a near native proficiency – which is awesome, and all three are great and funny friends who work exceptionally hard and are passionate about creating positive change in the region. Two are also well known gender and digital activists in the region while the other two are American academics with over a decade of involvement in the region. We are all deeply concerned about inequalities in the region, especially for women.

We are all also interested in the role that technology can play in helping to better the region.

So, with that gushing out of the way, I want to share with you our (Sarah Kendzior, Jale Sultanli, and Arzu Geybullayeva) research proposal.

Last year in running the normal analyses on the Caucasus Barometer to see what percentage of the population has access to certain technologies, I noticed that ONCE AGAIN Azerbaijan lagged behind Armenia and Georgia. This seems strange because they’re, on the whole, wealthier – and wealth is the primary predictor for technology ownership.

What I soon realized is that one of the reasons that Azerbaijanis are less likely to own and use technologies is that there are huge gender discrepancies.

I was really saddened by this and after sharing my findings with these wonderful women, we began chatting through social media channels and privately (sometimes in person, sometimes digitally) about these issues. We were all worried about this problem and what it means for Azerbaijan today and in the future.

We talked about trying to pull together a research proposal but we were all quite busy. I’ve been starting a new academic position, Jale moved to an entirely new country while working on her PhD, Sarah has been transitioning out of academia, and Arzu, as usual, has her hands in many projects. Sarah and I are also working on a few other projects regarding Internet in Azerbaijan (as we have in the past), but none with a gender lens.

But then we saw that Freedom House was hosting a contest for projects related to Internet freedom with public voting. I immediately emailed my lovely friends and suggested that this could be the opportunity that we’ve been waiting for to explore the question of what is going on with women and the Internet in Azerbaijan.

So we worked on our proposal and now we need your help.

Our idea is to run a series of focus groups in Azerbaijan to talk to women (and men) about what’s going on with women and the Internet. We’ll also conduct some interviews. After our analysis we’re going to disseminate the findings in an advocacy campaign.

You can vote on our project once a day for this entire week. Here’s the voting site. Please share.

I feel very fortunate to have the opportunity to work on such an important project with such amazing collaborators. We greatly appreciate your support.

Here are some images I made to promote it.

kids

kids

kids

09 Aug

IGF Baku public hearings

Public hearings in October to precede VII meeting of Internet Governance forum in Baku
17 July 2012
ABC.AZ Daily News

Baku, Fineko/abc.az. Azerbaijan Internet Forum’s Board has considered the issues of holding of the VII meeting of the international Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Baku this November.

The Azerbaijan Internet Forum reports that the Board decided to involve the government and the public in the discussion about the specific problems of Internet development to be considered within the IGF framework at the national and global platform. Among the issues of this problem there were called registration of national domains (zona.az), Internet development in regions, information security, e-governance and information transparency.

“In this regard, Azerbaijan Internet Forum is preparing an appeal to the government and the society to hold a public hearing on the matter this October,” it was informed.

08 Jun

ANS TV news transcript

Programme summary of Azeri ANS TV “Xabarci” news 1600 gmt 6 Jun 12
BBC Monitoring International Reports – Thursday, June 7, 2012
Presenter Nigar Mahmudova

1. 0010 Headlines.

2. 0100 The Armenian armed forces have fired on Azerbaijani positions. A clash is under way on the line of contact between Armenian and Azerbaijani troops at the moment, the TV says.

3. 0113 The Azerbaijani armed forces have thwarted an attack by Armenian troops in Horadiz District. One Armenian soldier was killed and two were wounded in a border clash, the TV says.

4. 0130 The Karabakh bureau of ANS TV channel has reported that Armenian troops have fired on Azerbaijani positions from the Armenian-controlled Yusifcanli village in Agdam District.

5. 0142 Armenian troops are continuing to intensively fire on the village of Tapqaraqoyunlu in Goranboy District. Video shows local residents and the deputy head of the executive authorities of Goranboy District, Baxis Abdullayev, interviewed on the issue.

6. 0344 Armenian troops are continuing to fire the village of Alibayli in Tovuz District. Video shows local residents interviewed.

7. 0600 Five Azerbaijani soldiers killed in a border clash yesterday were buried today; video report.

8. 1017 Following the intensive clashes on the line of contact in the past two days, the Azerbaijani Defence Ministry has issued a special statement. Azerbaijani Defence Minister spokesman Eldar Sabiroglu is shown saying in order to distract people’s attention from domestic problems, Armenia started intensifying clashes on the line of contact.

9. 1207 At a meeting with Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton condemned the latest incidents that occurred on the contact line of Azerbaijani and Armenian troops. She said that the Karabakh conflict should be solved peacefully. Video shows Clinton and Mammadyarov speaking at a news conference.

10. 1419 The Karabakh peace process was discussed at a meeting held between Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. They also discussed energy, economic and political cooperation between the two countries at the meeting. Presenter-read report over video of the meeting.

11. 1511 US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited the 19th International Caspian Oil and Gas Exhibition held in Baku. Video shows the visit.

12. 1542 An ANS correspondent reports silence in the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops.

13. 1645 The General Staff of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces has issued a statement saying that the Azerbaijani armed forces are capable of liberating its territories any time. A total of 10 days are enough to liberate occupied territories, the statement says.

14. 1717 The Azerbaijani Defence Industry Ministry’s enterprise in Sirvan District is producing bullets. Video shows bullets produced in the enterprise.

15. 1908 Report on the demographic situation in Azerbaijan .

16. 2332 Foreign news: the USA.

17. 2407 Presenter signs off. Sport. Weather.
Original Language: Azeri
Original Source: ANS TV, Baku

19 May

Attitudes toward homosexuality in the Caucasus

There has been a lot of activity related to homosexuality in the Caucasus this week. Armenia’s favorite LGBT-friendly bar was firebombed, Azerbaijan is hosting Eurovision, and Georgia has had some LGBT activism and negative responses.

So, in light of this, here is some analysis of CRRC data on attitudes toward homosexuality in the Caucasus to get a sense of how the public feels about homosexuality.

Respondents were asked, on a scale of 1-10, how justifable is homosexuality.

I must add though, that all of these responses should be taken with a grain of salt. If one were to really try to measure attitudes toward homosexuality (or more likely measuring homonegativity) in the Caucasus, there would be totally different ways to go about it – like using vignettes or some other more detailed measurement like this one or this.

I don’t think that asking people if homosexuality is justified is an appropriate way to get at this topic. CRRC asked a lot of different questions about values in the Caucasus and I’m glad that they included this, but as a social scientist, I cannot stand behind this sort of jumping into a topic without a lot of work put forth on measurement. (That being said, if anyone is interested and wants to fund this research, please let me know! It’d be a great project.)

But something is better than nothing, so, here it goes…

(This infographic is quite boring, as there isn’t much to say.)



Link to full version