EVN Founder Discusses Disinformation in Armenia at Boston Tekeyan Center

Titizian said it is important to know who or what entity backs any news outlets. For example, she said, there are both domestic and outside forces behind dissemination of disinformation in Armenia.

“Internal actors and external forces are shaping the realty in Armenia,” she said. Among the online news outlets, Kremlin-affiliated media and Azerbaijani-affiliated Telegram channels are especially rampant in “spreading misinformation and causing a lot of panic and instability.” They often write in Armenian, warning of an impending catastrophe.

(Telegram is much more popular in Russia-centric countries. Its founder, Pavel Durov, was arrested earlier this month in France on various charges, including knowingly allowing the use of the social media network for illegal activities, including child trafficking.)

The landscape in Armenia itself is dominated by three forces, she said, the state, political parties and oligarchs and “then we have a handful of media outlets.”

The state owns several outlets, including Armenian Public Radio, Armenpress online news and H-1 television channel.

She joked about the rosy picture the latter always portrayed. “I wish I was living in the Armenia of H-Mek,” she said.

Political parties and oligarchs own many of the news outlets, ensuring “journalists do as they are told” to promote that entity’s agenda, much like the Soviet-era propaganda.

One major problem facing Armenia is the truth about ownership of media outlets.

“There was a big push for media ownership transparency and where they were getting their money,” she said. “This came with big push back.”

“Oftentimes you won’t find information” in an “about us” section on news websites. Therefore, “people oftentimes don’t know what agenda is being pushed by an outlet,” she said.

“The greatest lie of the 20th century was that the Soviet Union collapsed. In many ways, it is still very prevalent,” she said. In post-Soviet countries, “There is little tradition of objective information gathering, leading to reliance on rumors, speculation and conspiracy theories.”

She stressed the problems caused by conspiracy theories. “In Armenia, we love conspiracy theories. The country thrives on it,” she said.

Social media entries are often given the same weight as news from a serious, verified outlet, she added.

Facebook, she said, is a considered a major news outlet in Armenia. “Due to the fact that trust for the media is at its lowest [level]. They trust personal contacts more than they trust the media.”

She added, “If your friends on Facebook are of a particularly political persuasion, you are just going to be seeing certain news items that belong to that, creating echo chambers.”

“The war escalated the spread of misinformation,” she said.

Velvet Revolution and Karabakh War

When Nikol Pashinyan launched the Velvet Revolution and eventually became the holder of the country’s top political office, it seemed like the country was headed for a major, positive pivot in every regard.

By 2019, the process seemed to have soured.

“However, what happened with the Velvet Revolution was we saw signs of polarization, disinformation flows significantly escalated and it marked the beginning of large-scale misinformation in the media,” she said.

The previous government, she said, pushed the narrative that the new government was “Sorosakan,” meaning being on the payroll of George Soros, a billionaire who donates to liberal causes and is a favorite target of pro-Russian outlets. “This narrative was heavily pushed in the Armenian landscape,” she said.

Armenia has endured a great deal of extremely difficult challenges in the past few years, and citizens often don’t get the full picture from the government. Instead, the divisions among people is deepening.

Starting with the 2020 war, the 2022 invasion of Jermuk by Azerbaijani soldiers, the blockade of Artsakh and then the devastating ethnic cleansing and now the demarcation process on the border with Azerbaijan, the people have tried different outlets to get news they think they can trust.

“It has deepened societal divisions,” she said.

“Another problem is inconsistent communication by the government which has contributed to the vulnerability of Armenia’s information space. Strategic communication does not exist in Armenia,” she said.

“They are just not giving us the information,” she said.

The government has enacted laws which while apparently intended to clear up media ownership, have led to curtailing the rights of the free press, leading to self-censorship by legitimate media outlets. “That’s just the reality,” she said.

She singled out the government’s military press conferences during the war, as an example of why the citizens don’t trust government data.

Artsrun Hovhannisyan, the Armenian Ministry of Defense spokesperson during the Karabakh war, offered precise, detailed information about the victories of the Armenian army day to day, which turned out to be little more than fiction.

“We will win. We will win,” she quoted him as saying.

“What they were doing was choosing not to share bits of information. They were leading us to believe we were doing well in the war,” she said.

Her son and colleague were in Artsakh and even they had a hard time finding out what was happening.

“It was so difficult to get information from the military. Not only were they not trying to massage the message, they were trying to hide the message from us. That led to a lot of distrust. We all failed. We knew it was happening on some level but we were afraid to admit it,” she said.

The fall of Shushi into Azerbaijani hands was when they realized that the narrative they were receiving from the government was indeed fictitious.

When Karabakh Premier Arayik Harutyunyan’s office made the announcement on Facebook, she said, they refused to believe it.

“We’re like ‘no, his Facebook has been hacked.’ That’s how delusional we were. We didn’t do our job well enough to tell the public what was really happening,” she said. “I couldn’t believe Shushi could fall.”

Titizian and her colleagues did not know what was happening on the front lines, but, she said, they knew well before the war, the state of Armenia’s army — and it was not good. However, telling the truth was also out of the question.

“I feel that I failed as a journalist and most of us feel that way. Before the war we were too afraid to tell the truth. We were too afraid to say there was corruption. That for 30 years there was this myth that we were the strongest army in the region. …We all had husbands or brothers or friends who served in the army. We all knew what was going on because if we did, we were labeled as traitors,” she added. “There are certain institutions that are untouchable, like the church or the army.”

Many in the opposition, after the ignominious defeat, started a narrative that this ending was a premediated defeat, that lands were sold to Azerbaijan.

“We throw around words and sentences and narratives without having proof,” she said.

“Loss of Shushi has fueled public distrust,” she said.

Traitor or Hero

The words “traitor” and “hero” are so used so often to describe people that they have become devalued, she said..

“It’s not that black and white,” she said. “There is a huge gray area that we fail to see. If we continually do this to ourselves, we are only fueling [Azerbaijani leader Ilham] Aliyev.”

Armenia’s social fabric is being unraveled by this set of circumstances where the government is not being truthful or forthcoming and various sources online spout stories which are being taken as facts by many.

“Addressing disinformation is vital. Building resilience against disinformation would be key to Armenia’s recovery and the creation of aa unified vision for Armenia’s future,” she said.

She talked about “hybrid warfare” waged against Armenia.

“There is no definite definition of what hybrid warfare is, but basically it uses or leverages asymmetrical tactics such as political or economic manipulation to exploit vulnerabilities,” she said.

“Weaponizing the media or governmental organizations, spreading disinformation, creating panic is society is their ultimate goals,” contributing to society’s instability.

One power using such means is Russia, she said.

“Russia isn’t conducting military operations against Armenia. We know that. But a lot of hybrid warfare mechanisms they are using is already 9in place,” she said. They control mining, infrastructure, finance and energy. “Russia doesn’t need to do a lot. They own so much of the infrastructure.”

“The economy is so intertwined with Russia,” she said. “We’re so dependent on Russia that Russia doesn’t even need to use these tactics.”

“Our vantage point is always from the Russian machine,” she said.

Maria Zakharova, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson, is someone who is watched in Armenia with awe and fear, as she is forever chiding Armenia for its latest bad actions and cooperation with the West.

“Armenia has always cooperated with NATO, that’ nothing new. They are spinning the news in such a way that Armenian is trying to be a member of NATO,” she said.

Another problem is in Armenia, many don’t understand the difference between a news story compared to an opinion piece. Also, with the current laws there, politicians often take media outlets to court, even if the story is correct. That way, the outlet has to spend a lot of money on lawyers and next time may think twice before writing a story.

She advocated for self-regulating bodies, which would advocate for fact-based and open journalism.

At the end of the talk, Titizian participated in a lengthy question-and-answer session.

Tekeyan Cultural Association of the US and Canada Executive Director and Mirror-Spectator Managing Editor Aram Arkun served as moderator and introduced Titizian at the lecture.