22 May 2010
Armenian bloggers seize influence, legitimacy with the power of …. Live Journal?
Check out my latest piece in the Faster Times on how Armenian bloggers have used the long-forgotten “virtual community” Live Journal, long-forgotten in the U.S., as a new media tool to fight the power!
When the Live Journal “virtual community” first came online in 1999, it basically operated as a venue for whiny American middle-schoolers to overshare, write bad poetry and meet pedophiles. At least that’s how I saw it. I was in middle school at the time.
Ten years later, after Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, and iPhones apps seemed to have successively killed off the first generation of blog platforms and social networks, I was stunned to find that not only was Live Journal not extinct, but was in fact an influential vehicle for grass roots activism, social discussion and independent news sharing in Armenia — a country lacking in all three.
Armenia is rated “partly free” on democracy and “not free” on the status of its freedom of the press by Washington-based pro-democracy NGO Freedom House. According to internetworldstats.com little over six percent of Armenia’s population uses the internet, while most turn to exclusively pro-government broadcast media for information. But for Armenians, seeing isn’t believing.
To read the rest of the article, click here!