ABOUT
Onnik James Krikorian is a journalist, photographer and media consultant from the United Kingdom. Published by The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, BBC, National Geographic, Geographical, The National, Stratfor, New Internationalist, EurasiaNet, Transitions Online, Institute of War for Peace Reporting, UNICEF and others, he has also fixed for the BBC, Al Jazeera English, The Wall Street Journal, and National Geographic.
Artist Lusine Aguletsi, Yerevan, Armenia
© Onnik James Krikorian 2000
He has over thirty years experience in the national and international media, including working contracts at The Bristol Evening Post, The Independent, and The Economist. For five years, from 2007-2012, he was the Caucasus Regional Editor for Global Voices.
He has covered the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno Karabakh since visiting the disputed territory for The Independent in 1994. In August 2008 he also covered the Russia-Georgia war. This has led to related work as a trainer in conflict-sensitive reporting as well as in social media for Armenian, Azerbaijan, Georgian, Moldovan, Turkish, Abkhazian, and Ossetian journalists.
He speaks regularly on the same at many international conferences and was part of an expert working group, Evaluating the Impact of New Media on Conflict, at the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) in Washington D.C. in 2010. Pioneering the use of new and social media in Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict resolution, transformation, and cross-border cooperation from 2008 onwards, this has since expanded to include Armenia-Turkey as well as Abkhazia and South Ossetia, including work for the European Union Monitoring Mission (EUMM) in Georgia.
In October 2012 he presented his work related to the media in the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict at a seminar organized by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Dublin, Ireland. And in February 2013 he was also an expert speaker at an intergovernmental seminar on evaluating methods to combat violent extremism online in Abu Dhabi, UAE, organized by the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications (CSCC), Global Counterterrorism Forum (GCTF), and the Hedayah Center.
From August to November 2013 he was contracted by Canal France International to organise the 4M Journalism and Social Media Forum held in Tbilisi, Georgia, in November 2013 for journalists and media professionals from Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. In June 2014 he was also a participant for a closed expert meeting on Developing an Effective Counter-Narrative Framework for Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) organised by The International Centre for CounterTerrorism — The Hague and the Hedayah Centre.
In 2015 this work has continued with workshops held for the European Union Monitoring Mission (EUMM) and Transparency International Georgia as well as the OSCE office in Tajikistan, the OSCE Centre in Kyrgyzstan, and OSCE Transnational Threats Division. He also holds workshops on social media, mobile reporting, and conflict-sensitive reporting for international media support organisations such as Free Press Unlimited and Deutsche Welle Akademie.
From December 2016 to December 2018 he worked on multiple external consultancy contracts with the OSCE Transnational Threats Department / Action against Terrorism Unit (TNTD / ATU) on drawing up training curriculums on Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism (P/CVE) for Youth, Women, and Community Leaders.
He can be followed on Twitter and Facebook.
LATEST BLOG POSTS
Skype in Conflict Zones: An example from the South Caucasus
In a situation where Armenia and Azerbaijan are meant to be negotiating to end the conflict over the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh, civil society should be very active. However, it doesn’t appear as though it is, and not least because few people actually believe that a breakthrough is possible, especially when cross-border activities are far simpler to conduct in the area of Armenia-Turkey relations. Indeed, and to be quite frank, it is difficult to consider that much is going on at all. Meanwhile, the situation isn’t helped by the fact that few Azerbaijani civil society activists visit Armenia, and even fewer Armenians visit Azerbaijan. In short, an environment conducive to peace or conflict resolution doesn’t seem to exist.
Online Social Networks in Armenia-Azerbaijan peacebuilding and cross-border communication
Since taking the first tentative steps to bring bloggers from Armenia and Azerbaijan together online in June 2008, it’s been both amazing and surprising to look back at how new media has managed to encourage and facilitate communication between the two countries. Locked into a bitter conflict over the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh, the online environment which exists today was unimaginable two and half years ago. Even professionally it has opened up new possibilities. As a journalist, for example, the first time I ever co-penned an article with a counterpart in Azerbaijan, ironically enough entitled Nagorno Karabakh Dispute Takes to Cyberspace, was in isolation. We both wrote two separate pieces and submitted them to an American editor who then cut and put them together as one. Today, even though many publications covering the Caucasus still work like this, I can now do so without any in between involved.
The Media in Armenia and Azerbaijan: Effective or Affective?
Many academics argue that the influence of the media is especially strong in environments where citizens depend on a limited number of news sources. In contrast, when citizens have alternative sources of information they are less subject to the potential effects of media. Following this argument, how affective is the media in Armenia and Azerbaijan in establishing an image of the “other” in an environment where over 90 percent of the populations choose television as their primary source of information on current events with over 40 percent choosing family, friends, neighbors and colleagues as their second main source?