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.

And as part of my own personal project to amplify alternative voices from Armenia and Azerbaijan online, I’ve also managed to encourage and solicit guest posts from bloggers and activists from both sides, and some of these were last week put together in the form of an actual feature story on ethnic Armenian and Azeri co-existence in Georgia. Thomas de Waal, author of Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War loved it. He did, however, ask if I had written anything on lessons learned in the process of using online tools to facilitate communication and cooperation in what was a first experiment in using blogs to present views never usually represented in the Armenian and Azerbaijani media. So, with a peace deal as elusive as ever, and concerns that both countries are again moving towards war, perhaps now is the time to do so, especially as it might help others working in the same area.

To begin with, though, a brief background to the problem.

The post-War environment

Armenia and Azerbaijan fought a war over the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh in the early 1990s and over 25,000 were killed with a million forced to flee their homes. Despite a tentative peace following a 1994 ceasefire agreement, the frontline nevertheless remains tense, with dozens of young conscripts on both sides dying each year. Meanwhile, traditional forms of communication between the two sides have been cut off. So, although it is possible to telephone Azerbaijan from Armenia, it is not possible the other way round, for example, and Armenians are also unable to visit Azerbaijan, with the same true the other way round. Meetings between civil society activists therefore have to take place in third countries, but even so, not only does each society generally frown upon such meetings, but some potential participants are reluctant to take part for fear of problems back home.

As a result, such meetings are generally closed and shrouded in secrecy. For most Armenians and Azerbaijanis, therefore, such meetings are not even known to occur.

Moreover, even when such meetings do take place, the lack of communication between the two countries often leads participants to lose contact when they do return to the reality of isolation, and some even become negatively affected by nationalist propaganda as a result. I saw such an example in 2008 while fixing for an Al Jazeera English documentary on the conflict when the journalist I was working with met up with a former Armenian student who had been open to communication in the past. Nowadays, cut off from contact with Azerbaijanis she had formed friendships with on a training course in Georgia, she is surrounded by nationalists and has even become one herself. In such a situation, it is probably no wonder then that no real progress has been made since the 1994 ceasefire. The problem has also been exacerbated by a media in both countries which resorts mainly to propaganda and negative stereotyping, as a recent report identified.

Without more accurate and unbiased information […] free of negative rhetoric and stereotypes, Armenians and Azerbaijanis will continue to see themselves as enemies without any common ground.

That situation, however, is slowly changing, and key to the success of my own work in communication and cooperating with the other side, as well as acting as a go-between for others, has been to go online. Even so, and despite the importance of blogs or applications such as Skype to engage in audio or video real-time communication, the real breakthrough has been thanks to social networking sites such as Facebook. Actually, let me correct that. It has been Facebook.

Social Networking as a Conduit to Peace

In June 2008, when I first made contact with Azerbaijani bloggers at a Caucasus BarCamp in Tbilisi, Georgia, we naturally exchanged email addresses. And, as Facebook had become popular at the time, it seemed only appropriate to add them as friends on the social networking site. To be honest, though, I wasn’t sure if they would accept. The idea that anyone in Armenia or Azerbaijan could be openly seen to be in contact was considered almost treasonous let alone possible. But, despite some hiccups along the way, such as one or two Armenian nationalists leaving abusive comments on my Facebook page, the fact that they did accept was perhaps one of the most defining moments of the past 12 years I’ve spent based in Armenia. Suddenly, despite the lack of appropriate coverage in the Armenian media, or any at all in fact, I could suddenly take a glimpse into the lives of at least some of its citizens. And they too could look into mine.

For anyone reading this who has not been brought up on a near constant stream of Armenian or Azerbaijani propaganda depicting the other side as inherently evil and completely different to the point where co-existence is impossible, it probably comes as no surprise that a young adult in Azerbaijan is not too dissimilar in terms of their lifestyle and interests to their Armenian counterpart of the same age and same social background. And if the propaganda machines on both sides would like to convince their population that the other thinks only of annihilation and revenge, or is obsessed only with disseminating propaganda against the ‘enemy,’ the reality suggests quite the contrary. On Facebook, for example, the bulk of posts, notes and comments relate to music, film, hobbies, and sometimes more political issues such as the need for democracy. Rarely is Karabakh mentioned.

True, this isn’t always the case. Nationalists are also online, and on both sides. However, with its very nature being “social,” such efforts to use Facebook are not particularly successful. In some cases, users in Armenia and Azerbaijan who have used the site to disseminate propaganda, for example, have actually had their accounts suspended. Some might object to this on the basis of freedom of speech, but in most cases it has been hate-speech and not well-formed opinion, discussion or debate. What does exist in terms of nationalist discourse occurs on the pages of a few individuals where content is pretty much intended for their own circle of like-minded friends and associates, usually from the same country, and therefore stays somewhat civil as there are never usually any dissenting views presented. The vitriol and aggression can instead be found on Facebook Groups, although there is never as much activity or as interaction as on individual user pages.

In a sense, it’s almost as if Facebook is governed by the accepted or expected norms of behavior when meeting people in the real world. You don’t meet up with friends at a social gathering or in their own home to pick a fight with others also present, for example, or at least not if you ever want to be invited again. A simplistic interpretation of online behavioral patterns, of course, but this has so far been largely the case. As a result, attempts to prevent communication usually fail. With a few notable exceptions, such as threats made against the organizer of an Azerbaijani film festival in Armenia which forced it to be postponed, Facebook has certainly shown itself to be a more civilized online forum than, say, comments on YouTube or on improperly moderated blogs. Even for those that do react against such communication, they usually send offensive or threatening private mails rather than openly commenting.

Not very nice, perhaps, but this at least means that an open space for communication is kept clear of insults and abuse. And on the rare occasions that it does happen, the person responsible is literally seen have acted unreasonably. Instead, actual civilized debate can sometimes occur. And even though most people commenting rarely, if ever, change their position, silent onlookers have enough information and opinion to make up own minds.

Serendipity and flocking together

As mentioned above, one of the key attributes of Facebook is simply that it is a social networking site. Therefore, some critics charge, rather than extend existing social circles, they merely replicate those in the real world which for many people are formed on mutual factors such as sharing the same location and interests or the same culture and language. Ethan Zuckerman, a Harvard University researcher and co-founder of Global Voices, calls this phenomenon “imaginary cosmopolitanism.”

While more than 5 percent of Facebook users are Indonesian, it’s unlikely that you’re friends with any of them, unless you have Indonesian friends in the offline world. That’s because Facebook is designed to connect you with people you already know, not introduce you to new people.

 

[…]

 

I study the ways new media shapes people’s perceptions of the world. It’s my fond hope that social networks such as Facebook will help users broaden their perspectives by listening to a different set of people than they encounter in their daily life. But I fear services such as Facebook may be turning us into imaginary cosmopolitans.

 

We hear that 500 million people from around the world are using Facebook and forget that we hear mostly from our 130 (on average) friends, many of whom we’ve known since we went to high school together.

Ethan, of course, makes some very valid points which are probably true for the vast majority of Facebook users. However, and as I said on a recent panel at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington D.C., Facebook is too often being viewed in the context of what I consider to be a somewhat pointless cyber-utopian versus cyber-skeptic debate whereas it should only be considered simply as a tool. And, like any other tool, its strengths and weaknesses are actually determined by how it is used and by whom. It should also be considered in the context of fairly homogenous countries such as Armenia and Azerbaijan, now deprived of their ethnic Azeri and Armenia minorities because of the war, and isolated from each other in terms of accessible traditional inter-country communication mediums. If used properly, therefore, Facebook can become an incredibly powerful tool, allowing users in both countries not only the possibility to communicate, but to also break down negative stereotypes of the other.

A Different view of the ‘other’

When an Azerbaijani female friend ‘liked’ a photo of an Armenian girl I photographed at an opposition rally in Yerevan, also leaving a comment on how beautiful she was, many Armenians observing that interaction might have challenged the prevailing forced mindset that all Azerbaijanis hate Armenians, for example. Although somewhat simplistic, this is revolutionary in the Armenian-Azerbaijani context, and a few similar interactions later, some Armenians on my Facebook also wanted to interact with her too. Not surprisingly, the way to do that is also leaving a comment yourself, or by adding each other so that similar interactions can occur in someone else’s personal online space. Voila! Despite there being no other medium through which to exchange views, after a period of virtual trust-building and breaking down existing perceptions of the other side, one is finally created. And today, it is not uncommon for more Azerbaijanis to leave comments on my Facebook than Armenians, and so the process continues.

Albeit on a small scale, such interactions directly challenge the very basis isolation from the other is justified simply by occurring in the first place. And pretty soon, such networking spreads and others on both sides begin to ‘befriend’ those otherwise presented to them as the ‘enemy’ by the local media. Nevertheless, even if such connections are occurring and can run into the hundreds, they eventually begin to taper off. And herein lays the problem. Despite the achievements of Facebook as a tool to break down barriers and connect Armenians and Azerbaijanis online, Ethan’s arguments against Facebook become slowly apparent. Sooner or later, those Armenians and Azerbaijanis who do add each other on Facebook also tend to be incredibly similar in terms of their individual identity and world view. They are perhaps already cosmopolitan-minded and just needed the tools to circumvent the restrictions in place.

Basically, they are young, educated, English-speaking, and already likely to be open to the idea of communication with the other side if provided with the opportunity. Of course, this is marvelous and a huge success, but Such people are also a minority in their respective societies, even if the fact that they exist at all is incredible in itself. For a while, this gives users in Armenia and Azerbaijan access to information and opinions they never had before, but then a certain point is reached. From my experience closely monitoring as well as facilitating most of these connections, we seem to be getting to that position now. Also drawing upon my own experience in this area, Ethan again explains the situation.

Basically, the small worlds phenomenon is pretty easy to explain if we assume that everyone in the world has a fairly large number of friends who are distributed randomly. If I know 100 people, and they each know 100 people, within two degrees of me, I know 10,000 people. We’re up to a million in three degrees, a hundred million at four and 10 billion at five – and bingo, we’ve spanned the globe.

 

Of course, that’s not how friendships actually work. I know Onnik, and we both know lots of people the other doesn’t know… but we’ve also got lots of friends in common, via Global Voices. So if Onnik is one of my hundred friends, and twenty of his friends are already my friends, I’m reaching a much smaller set of people through him than I would through a friend who had no overlap with my other friends. Or, as Watts puts it in his book Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age, “the more your friends know each other, the less use they are to you in getting a message to someone you don’t know.”

As an outsider, I’m still not in this situation yet, but I can sense it coming very soon unless I work hard to avoid it. For most of those in Armenia and Azerbaijan connecting, however, a saturation point is slowly being reached. As an example, if at the end of 2008 befriending an Azerbaijani on Facebook would reveal 1-5 mutual friends in common, at the end of 2009 it would be 20. Now it is not uncommon for me to discover that it can be anywhere between 20-140 so sooner or later we will end up talking only to ourselves. On the other hand, and somewhat ironically, when I now add someone in Azerbaijan on Facebook, I often find that I have more mutual friends in common with them than they do with many of my other friends in Azerbaijan. Not surprisingly, of course, this is usually because they are journalists or activists and so that greater number of mutual friends is because we’re also part of the same professional circle of connections which others are not.

It’s still a success, of course, but it also highlights an increasingly evident problem.

Saturation Point?

Although the potential Facebook offers for Armenia-Azerbaijan communication remains, it also highlights the fact that the net needs to be spread wider. Even if I might have in excess of 150-200 connections in Azerbaijan on my own Facebook, whereas in 2007 I had none, the actual number of Facebook users in both countries is considerably larger. In Armenia at time of writing, and according to Facebook’s own advertising reach tool, there were 106,400 users in Armenia and 276,680 in Azerbaijan. Obviously, although revolutionary in its initial stage, connections formed on Facebook are a minority in terms of the actual number of users. In a sense it also reflects the prevailing mindset and reality in both societies. A recent poll conducted by the Caucasus Resource Research Centers, for example, revealed that 70 percent of Armenians were against friendship with Azerbaijanis. In Azerbaijan, the number was even higher. There, a staggering 97 percent of Azerbaijanis were against friendship with Armenians.

In such a situation, the task is now to analyze how social media can be used to change this situation as its clear that the traditional media and domestic political discourse is unlikely to do so. One possible way to reach out to the greater number of people in both countries not connected with the other might be language, but for now, those Armenians and Azerbaijanis connecting with each other usually all know English to varying degrees of fluency. Indeed, as indication that this could be crucial, in addition to the need for actual Internet penetration to also increase, we can look at the three most popular guest posts from my own blogging project aimed at facilitating informed discussion on relations between the two countries. Two were written by Azerbaijanis with the third, and actually the most popular, written by an Armenian. However, they appear to be most successful because they were made available in multiple languages.

While originally written in English, all were translated into Russian, the lingua franca of the region, for example, while the Armenian post was shared extensively by Facebook users in Azerbaijan when it was made available in Azerbaijani, and the same was true for a post by an Azerbaijani once it was made available in Armenian. Analysis of access statistics for these blog posts show that language was crucial to widening their reach even if it was Facebook that was the medium through which it was shared. Back in the real world, the lack of multi-lingual outreach also has other ramifications, especially in the area of civil society. My own newly formed connections not only opened up the possibility for Armenian-Azerbaijani communication, but also saw quite a few NGOs involved in regional peace building and cross-border communication approach me for recommendations of participants to include in their own projects. However, as the British Ambassador to Armenia pointed out, this also highlights the same problem.

After a while, those Armenians and Azerbaijanis communicating with each other online or who participate in actual physical meetings in third countries are not only a minority in their host countries, but they are also already part of the same social and political circles who are not only open to dialogue, but might already know each other already, or at least share mutual friends who think in the same way. Certainly, they do not represent the majority. Therefore, despite significant advances in the area of Armenian-Azerbaijani communication and cooperation thanks to Facebook, there is also the need not only to assess its impact in terms of quantative and qualitative results, but to also resolve some of the problems now slowly starting to emerge. One of those is the need to widen the net further than what can be considered a like-minded mainly English-speaking ‘elite.’

This could be in terms of the need for Armenians and Azerbaijanis to slowly use social media, and also traditional physical outreach methods, to target others in their own societies.

But this then leads to another problem: That of personal security in a highly charged environment largely opposed to cross-border communication let alone cooperation. Moreover, while online connections can still be made, there is also the need to analyze what type of interaction does occur when it does happen. For example, is it simply ’slacktivism’ and does it reduce over time as the novelty of communicating with the ‘enemy’ wears off or when attempts to prevent it are made by those opposed to such interaction? This isn’t to belittle or negate the importance of Facebook to date. Indeed, in the past two years Facebook has been a tremendous and indispensable tool. To be honest, I couldn’t even imagine such a situation where communication can openly occur openly without it. It also offers the possibility to break out of the internal closed networks which define much of domestic Armenian and Azerbaijani society and the way physical relationships, professional as well as personal, are formed.

This in itself is already an obstacle to the effectiveness of civil society in both countries, for example, and also arguably reduces the effectiveness of peace-building and other cross-border initiatives. Indeed, if once civic action was the monopoly of NGOs, low-cost and even free tools such as Facebook allow groups of individuals to develop their own grassroots initiatives. However, in order to develop, maximizing its effectiveness as a tool for cross-border communication and outreach, as well as for domestic purposes, certain issues not only need to be identified, but they also need to be addressed. And perhaps the most pressing problem which has yet to materialize is the most important. As Internet penetration increases, and as governments increasingly seek to control the use of new tools which break their monopoly on information and opinion, privacy and personal security might well be key.

That, however, will be the subject of my next post on the use of social networks in this area.

—

Also cross-posted on the Peace and Collaborative Development Network. For more coverage of the use of new and social media in conflict resolution and transformation in the South Caucasus, see my special coverage on Global Voices.