Before Zoom there was… Skype

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Love it or hate it, Zoom has become an integral part of many people’s lives during this pandemic and naturally, given even more closed borders because of the epidemiological situation, conflict-resolution projects. While this is to be applauded given that it has opened up communication in the public sphere, those organisations engaged in Armenia-Azerbaijan peacebuilding continually fail to use new tools adequately. Indeed, it has been an abject failure, continues to be one, and there is little sign that they have learned from their past mistakes too. 

It’s too easy to blame those failings on the technology not existing until now as it has existed for well over a decade. In the late 2000s, for example, pioneering the use of blogs and social media to connect Armenians and Azerbaijanis online, I presented on this extensively from Yerevan and Dublin to Washington D.C. and Vienna, and as the then Global Voices Caucasus Regional Editor even used Skype to record interviews across borders. One of the first, for example, was with blogger Scary Azeri who I recorded through Skype from Yerevan in 2009.

Unashamedly acerbic, but alway humorous, the blog has fast become popular with many interested in the region and posts have even been republished by the media in her native Azerbaijan. Today, Global Voices Online interviewed Scary Azeri about blogging, tweeting, cultural clashes, trolls and more.

Of course, nothing beats offline meetings and Nailya (Scary Azeri) and I met first in London the following year. Ironically, because of the pandemic and her wanting to meet her mother who flew in from Baku while she traveled from Doha, Nailya and I met again earlier this year in Tbilisi. 

Credit where it’s due, there was at least one organisation that thought out of the box. In 2009, DOTCOM, a US State Department-funded project implemented by PH International, connected teenagers from Armenia and Azerbaijan online and off. Unlike other conflict resolution projects at the time, Project Director Elizabeth Métraux was refreshingly open and honest about the project in my interview also held in 2009.

With the ongoing conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh understandably creating some problems, especially when ten teenagers from each of the two countries met up with their American counterparts in the U.S. last month, Program Director Elizabeth Métraux speaks candidly about some of the challenges experienced so far as well as some of the program’s successes.

Writing this blog post I’m reminded of an event held in Yerevan in 2010, the following year. Attending a regional conference with the British Ambassador, he told me that it was impossible to arrange for a few Azerbaijani analysts and activists to travel to Armenia to present. We were standing in the conference room of a large hotel with fast Internet and a projection screen. “They could have used Skype,” I responded, checking the connection speed from my phone. “It’s fast enough for video.”

Sadly, I remain unconvinced that those engaged in this sphere have examined so many other lost opportunities for connection in absentia or how to communicate in ways that larger society can understand.

As I’ve said before, it’s almost as if conflict resolution organisations are now up to the level of the late 2000s in their use of new technology and platforms while the rest of the world, and the societies they are failing to reach, are quite clearly in 2021. And it’s not as if they haven’t been told. In 2010 when peacebuilding organisations followed my lead in using blogs and social media to connect Armenians and Azerbaijanis online, they totally ignored my warnings about trolls and others seeking to derail the process, something that monopolised online discussion during and after last year’s war.

And that wasn’t the only time. About 5 or 6 years ago, I also advised the donors of a very large Karabakh project that social media needs to be taken seriously by those engaged in Armenia-Azerbaijan peacebuilding in the region. They agreed and I drew up a set of recommendations that could have served as the basis for effective outreach online, but the actual project lead on it responded defensively and somewhat aggressively instead. “Social Media is not rocket science,” I was told.

Well, I’m sorry to say, if you couldn’t and still can’t recognise the need to produce custom content for multiple online platforms as well as bring in others such as marketing professionals and behavioural scientists then it might just as well be. Social media is not simply opening a Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter account. It’s about engagement and, as they say, about content being king, especially in a world of memes and low attention spans.