In the past month in Armenia, the revolutionary movement rapidly collected momentum. Initially, that movement went by two names, Take A Step and Reject Serzh. Then the two combined turning into the slogan Take A Step, Reject Serzh. The Velvet Revolution arrived and settled. Frequently, you could hear the term Pan-National Movement.

During the revolutionary month, the events developed (are developing) at lightning speed. Every day we would have more than one breaking news story, and that had become commonplace. We saw rallies with the participation of tens of thousands of protesters, the resignation of a Prime Minister, the election of a new Prime Minister.

Political discussions are everywhere, in public transportation, in cafes, pubs, kitchens and social networks. The other topics have gone into retreat. Politics have taken the place of Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Real Madrid Clasico and Eurovision.

The interest towards news for people in Armenia is made clear with Google Searches.

In Google Trends, the searches in Armenia for the last 30 days have been exclusively political news.

The absolute leader is “Nikol Pashinyan,” then “Liberty,” and the next 4 topics are news, “1in.am, Live Television, Television, News.

Live broadcasts are featured among these topics. Live broadcasts, opposition leader, then Prime minister Nikol Pashinyan’s Facebook live feeds have been fixed as the people’s main source for getting news.

In Google Trends, among the list of terms searched for in Armenia in the last 30 days, 9 out of a dozen top ten keywords were linked to RFE/RL (Azatutyun).  Azatutyun radiokayan 2018, azatutyun tv, azatutyun.am, azatutyun radiokayan, azatutyun, azatutyun am, azatutyun tv 2018 etc. In the top ten, the only term that was not related to RFE/RL was the term nikol pashinyan.

In the top 20 list are other news sources from Armenia including mamul.am, news am, lurer:

Usually, searched for terms are the names of sitcoms, Armenian stars or hit songs. This month, the only sitcoms to have made the top 20 list were azizyanner and voske dproc.

This revival of interest towards news is a chance for Armenian TV and news websites. An opportunity for quality media production, when the audience demands that in order to make decisions, there is a need for news.

Gegham Vardanyan

The views expressed in the column are those of the author's and do not necessarily reflect the views of Media.am.