Social networks in Armenia have a social significance for the population. The head of the Region Research Center, Laura Baghdasaryan, expressed such an opinion by presenting the results of a sociological survey on people’s consumption of media.

The survey was conducted in 19 cities and 34 villages of Armenia. 1,150 citizens were interviewed randomly.

“58.8% of the respondents get information on the Internet, 35.7% on TV. Interestingly, more news is received from relatives, neighbors and friends (4.2%) than traditional media, radio (1%) and printed newspapers (0.3%), said Laura Baghdasaryan.

66% of the population receives basic information from social networks, secondly television and thirdly online news.

This position of media consumption is absolutely unrelated to the gender of the respondents, the place of residence, and other factors. “Only in the case of social networks is it necessary to note that people with low incomes choose to get their information through the internet than those who have higher incomes.”

77.7% of respondents use social networks, 21.4% do not, the remaining 1% are thinking about it.

73% of citizens use Facebook, 30.3% from Instagram, 23.4% from Odnoklasniki, 4.3% from Twitter, 1.7% from VKontakte, 0.4% from Telegram.

Laura Baghdasaryan said the respondent have great experience in using social networks, with 82.2% of citizens who have between 4-10 years of experience and 12.8% having up to 4 years of experience.

Facebook is used as a source of information, especially in tense situations, in some cases, people get brief information on events from this network as a complement to details from other media sources.

A quarter of citizens use Facebook only for receiving information, 53% for receiving and distributing, 2.4% for distributing only.

Online, people are mainly following domestic politics, human rights, corruption, the situation in the army, urban planning illegalities, anti-Armenian propaganda and other topics.

45.4% of the respondents consider the speeches of state officials on Facebook useful, 8.3% consider it very useful, and 30.5% not that useful.

In a separate section, the Region has also been seen people’s interest in the election campaign. About 40% of citizens would keep informed about the campaigns, 25% found it interesting, 17% isn’t sure, and 6% entertaining.

Gayane Asryan