Media Monitoring Quarterly Report • January 1- March 31

“Union of Informed Citizens” NGO has summed up all the manipulations and propaganda theses circulating in the Armenian media on various political events in the first quarter of 2020.

The quarterly report was compiled based on the monitoring of social and online media, as well as print media and YouTube channels for the period of January- March 2020.

The monitoring of the mentioned three months showed that the propaganda, with some exceptions, was mainly directed against the current government.

In particular, after the suicide of Georgy Kutoyan, the former director of the National Security Service, at the beginning of 2020, and after the shootings at the Erebuni Plaza Business Center, a thesis was put forward that an uncontrollable situation had arisen in the country, and that the current authorities are losing the ground under their feet.

During the reported period, a large percentage of media manipulations was targeting the negotiations over Artsakh.  The thesis of “handing over the lands”, born years ago, has been spiced up with new elements: the attempts of the current government are hindered by the “heroic presidents”, consequently, they are “put in jail” for the government to get full freedom of action.

 Against the backdrop of the described, all kinds of theses about returning to Stalin’s era, with falsely initiated criminal cases and censorship and suppression of free press started circulating in the media.

Read the full report here.