Yerevan Press Club has summarized the preliminary results of the sociological survey conducted in Armenia under the Project “Karabagh Conflict in the Mirror of Media and Public Opinion in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Mountainous Karabagh”. This project is conducted by YPC jointly with Baku and Stepanakert Press Clubs with the assistance of Open Society Institute Network Media Program (see details in YPC Weekly Newsletter, April 28 – May 4, 2001 and February 3-9, 2001).
The subject of this part of the Project is to reveal the attitude of different social strata and the whole society to the Karabagh problem and its possible solutions. The final results of the surveys, conducted by YPC, BPC and SPC will be publicized in a few months. Yet, certain figures on the popularity of media in Armenia can already be introduced.
Thus, out of 1000 respondents surveyed in Yerevan and ten regions of Armenia 40.1% do not read political newspapers, 28.5% prefer “Aravot” daily, 19.6% – “Azg”, 16.1% – “Hayots Ashkhar”, 12.4% – “Haikakan Zhamanak”, 11.6% – “Golos Armenii”, followed by “Iravunk”, “Hayastani Hanrapetutiun”, “Novoye Vremya”, “Yerkir” and others, which are significantly behind the leading five. Notably, the distribution in Yerevan only is somewhat different: “Aravot” – 18.8%, “Golos Armenii” – 18.8%, “Azg” – 12.3%, “Hayots Ashkhar” -10.3%, “Haikakan Zhamanak” – 9%.
As to the TV companies, the leading position is taken by the Public Television of Armenia; 65.9% of the respondents asked throughout the country prefer this company. “Prometheus” is favored by 63.1%, ORT – 33.2%, RTR – 31.3%, NTV- 19.8%. These are followed by “Armenia” (14%), “Cinemax” (11.3%), “A1+” (11.3%) and others. (Each respondent could mark several TV channels he/she preferred to watch.)
The rating of subjects that are of most interest to the media audience is distributed in the following way: world news – 57.7%, Karabagh problem – 46.5%, the economic situation in the country – 44.9%, social issues – 40.2%, reference – 38.4%, art and literature – 37.3%, sports – 35.2%, accidents and criminal news – 33.7%, science and technology – 30.9%, family and life – 30.2%, etc. (From the offered fifteen subjects the respondents could mark several.) Notably, among the least popular themes are: the activities of the state structures (26.4%) and political parties (16.2%).
The question “On what sources do your rely to get information of interest?” was answered in the following way: TV programs – 85.7%, newspapers – 39.8%, radio programs – 27.6%, conversations with colleagues – 24.3%, conversations with families and friends – 24.1%, from other sources – 5.5%, difficult to answer – 2.8%. (The vast majority of the respondents named a few sources.)
It is noteworthy that among “other sources” which were not offered by the questionnaire, the respondents mostly mentioned the Internet. According to the data obtained, 9.6% respondents are Internet users, and 10.4% are e-mail users. These figures are higher in Yerevan, for obvious reasons: 19.3% and 20.3% respectively. In earlier surveys the number of Internet users was significantly smaller.
