The Armenian Media Field Before The Storm

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Samvel Martirosyan
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Media researcher

Usually, if literature speaks of the pre-emptiness phenomena, the authors point out that there was an extraordinary calm before the storm.

In our case, of course, it is not only not possible to speak about the extraordinary and beautiful silence but it also cannot be dreamed about. But to some extent there are some similarities with highly artistic styles.

If we look at the situation on social networks, we will see that it has become stable for several months now. For many, this might seem funny, because Facebook is completely filled with swearing and curses. But those have not increased.

In August, an average user wrote two comments per month. The same is true now.

If we consider the average activity of social networks, the number of active monthly users in Facebook during the last few months have dropped a little, compared to the post-revolutionary summer. If for some reason the number of users reached 1.4 million, in recent months, it has stopped at 1.3 million and remained stable.

Approximately the same stagnation is seen in Twitter, which is also perceived as a political platform. On the other hand, Instagram continues to grow steadily, its numbers has reached 650,000 and has a positive trend of growth.

The same can be said about LinkedIn.

And these are exactly the apolitical platforms where people are fleeing to from the hyperactive counterpart, Facebook.

If we look at news websites, we will also see a stabilization trend. If there is a certain increase in visits, it is mainly due to the increase of viewings of materials related to entertainment.

Below I present statistics regarding the political sections covered by some of the well-known media outlets (according to Similarweb).

All of this suggests that a large portion of society has become tired of political issues and prefer to discuss Kim Kardashian’s upcoming visit to Armenia.

Taking into consideration the fact that the pre-election campaign will be very short-term, political forces face a rather difficult task. Especially those parties and alliances, which are not directly in the “black” and “white” camps, but who need to find voters in the shortest possible time.

Samvel Martirosyan

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


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