Alternative Resources in Media Survey Successfully Finished

By CRRC-Armenia Junior Fellow Ani Karapetyan

In July, 2013, the end line survey within the Alternative Resources in Media (ARM) project reached its final stage. The baseline survey of the project was conducted in 2011, uncovering media preferences and concerns of the Armenian public. Detailed information on the 2011 survey is also available in the CRRC–Armenia blog post.

In 2013, the end line survey of the aforementioned project was also conducted; the results of which revealed much interesting information. Some ARM 2013 survey related materials have already been made available in CRRC–Armenia website. Meanwhile, you can familiarize yourself with several of the survey findings presented below.

As one of the aims of the ARM Project was to support alternative media content, it is interesting to look into the traditional and alternative media use by the respondents of the surveys.

Traditional media users’ numbers did not change considerably since 2011. The number of people watching only TV increased by 6% and a 7% decrease occurred in the number of those who both watch TV and listen to the radio. The picture with the Internet use is different: by the 2013 survey, the share of the Internet users increased by 20%. However, whilst changes in Internet use habits for those aged 16 – 25 and 26 to 60 are not significant, people aged 26 – 30 started to use the Internet much more in 2013 compared to 2011. In 2011, 41% of respondents aged 26 to 30 used the Internet in the last 12 months. By 2013, this percentage had increased to 81%. Further, while the Internet use increase in Yerevan (64 % in 2013 vs. 44% in 2011) was predictable, the increase of the level of Internet use in rural areas (by 24 percentage points) was surprising. It should be also noted that the level of the Internet use in rural areas remains low (61% of the respondents did not use the Internet in the last 12 months according to the 2013 survey results) (see the Figure below). 

In contrast to the 2011 survey, in 2013 respondents were asked about media owners. The results revealed that media ownership is still unknown to general public: only 22 respondents (1.5% of all) were able to specify the names of the media owners, and only 4% of the respondents (60 people) agreed that media owners influence the media activity.  

Analysis of Internet privacy concerns revealed a decreasing trend: 27% of the respondents interviewed in 2013 were not at all concerned with the Internet privacy issues compared to 19% in 2011. Thus, the Internet is perhaps considered as a trusted source of alternative knowledge and information circulation.

This brief outline of the 2011 and 2013 surveys is not wholly representative of what analyzing power the survey has. It is a great source and tool for deeper analyses, and all interested researchers, media representatives and policy makers are invited to make use of the project database published.