A photo with the caption “700-year-old house in Lori” was shared with lightning speed in the Armenian segment of Facebook. From the ArenaNews.am Facebook page alone, the photo was shared 400 times as of 10:30 pm on February 5. In 20 minutes, that number grew to 474.

The photo, in fact, is of a house in the village of Kandovan in Iran. Checking the source of the photo isn’t hard; you simply have to do a reverse image search online. Just as Media.am had presented in the article “Beautiful Photo, But Not of Dilijan.”

In the comments below the photo shared by ArenaNews.am, Facebook user Razmik Amirkhanyan writes that it’s not Lori in the photo, but Iran’s Kandovan village, urging those who published the photo “explain that there was a misunderstanding… that would help your reputation more.” Those responsible for the ArenaNews.am Facebook page paid no attention to the comment.

The ArenaNews.am Facebook page has 3,945 likes as of February 5 [since grown to 4,059]. The page represents the website ArenaNews.am. It has the appearance of a news website, but there is no editor’s or journalist’s name. In the About section, you can send a message to ArenaNews. There’s a map where as the editorial office’s possible address is marked Yerevan’s Charles Aznavour Square.

The ArenaNews.am domain is registered to someone by the name of Ruzanna Hovhannisyan. The contact details of the person who registered the website are available.

And though numerous users on Facebook continue to write that the photo is not of Lori, but of the Iranian village of Kandovan, all the same, in a period of 45 minutes, the number of people sharing the photo from ArenaNews’s page increased to 557.

Gegham Vardanyan

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