Which media outlets did we monitor?
We observed 5 popular online media outlets, namely 1in.am, News.am, Aravot.am, 168.am, Tert.am.
Besides, we monitored 23 TV programmes of various genres, namely news programs (“Agenda”, “360°”, “News Hour”, “Post Factum”, “Epicenter”, “Sunday Epicenter”, “The Country Today”, “Saturday Evening”, “Horizon”, “Sunday Horizon”), interviews (“Off the Agenda”, “Agenda: Interview”, “R-Evolution”, “Outline”, “Country’s Issue”, and “Perspective”), talk-shows/ TV oratory pieces (“First Pavillion”, “Formula Club”, “Armenian Firday”, “Transition with Dulyan” and “Out Loud”), and TV documentary (“Life on the Border” and “At the Posts”) by 5 TV companies of republican and satellite coverage (Public TV, Armenia TV, Kentron TV, Yerkir Media TV, and Shant TV). We monitored the Nation – Army series satellite broadcast by Public TV (Channel One).What topic and what issues did we research?
We studied the Armenian army as a whole. We aimed at describing not only the specific features of coverage on the public discussions regarding the Nation – Army concept launched in that time period (mostly in October – November), but also the broader information climate throughout the three-month period of our research (October 2017 – January 2018) that had emerged due to the provision of information on other issues directly related with the army.
This classification was arrived at due to a content analysis of the materials with a targeted focus on the issues raised in them:
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The group of issues on Nation-Army (a total of 15 issues) were raised in the discussions on and coverage of the concept, as well as in the context of active political and civil processes developing on the occasion. These are Military service/conscription, education/deferral, security, armaments, social issues, domestic affairs, evasion from the army, corruption, public attitude to the army, healthcare, economy/supplies to the army, transparency of the army and civilian oversight of the army, migration, democratic freedoms, and the link between church and the army.
The group of non – ‘Nation-Army’, rather so-called background issues (a total of 10 issues) were covered beyond the context of Nation-Army concept. They were defined according to the following characteristic features:
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- Legal – Information on criminal cases on offenses in the Armenian army,
- Foreign relations – Information on foreign military relations and military cooperation with other
- Karabakh conflict – Information on the military situation on the contact line of forces in Karabakh and in the border regions of Armenia, on incidents, announcements and judgments on the reduction of military tensions in the contact
- Azerbaijani army – information on the armaments of the opponent army, foreign military cooperation, events taking place within the
- Armies of other countries – Information on the RF military base in Armenia and the armies of CSTO
- Event-related News – Information on the visits of the leadership from the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Armenia, the General Headquarters, the Defense Army of the Artsakh Republic to military units, as well as inter-ministerial and other types of meetings and discussions, and information on the military exercises of the Armenian Army.
- Feature – Stories about soldiers and officers currently in service at the armed forces, as well as military servicemen killed in the Karabakh war and subsequent
- Coverage – Issues in army events coverage, including training issues for journalists covering military exercises and other
- Diaspora – Judgments about the relations between the Diaspora and the Armenian army that were voiced without reference to the Nation-Army
- History – Information about Armenian military art and the participation of the Armenian military in World
How did we count? What did we define?
- We measured the frequency of coverage of this or that topic after the following formula: “one material/story – one or more issues”.
- We have defined the representatives of the political, social, professional and other groups speaking on the topic under study as authors of the issue. We have measured the level of their activity by the principle of “one author – one or several issues”. The number of issues raised in one material/story has been counted by the change of author and change of the sign (positive, negative or neutral) of attitude contained in the messages by the following principle: “The number of authors is equal to the number of issues, and the number of signs is equal to the number of issues”.
- We have determined the attitudinal signs of the issues coming from the direct semantics of the messages, not their contextual
