Social Media in the South Caucasus: Shaping Society from the Bottom-Up

PanARMENIAN.Net - Ms. Mkrtchyan, an NGO worker for more than 10 years, has felt frustrated in what she sees as the government’s refusal to acknowledge social problems such as domestic abuse, alcoholism, gender inequality and extreme poverty. She wanted to create a three-country website where people could anonymously submit reports, videos or photos of social problems shared throughout the South Caucasus—the idea being to bring light to these issues and remove the stigma of openly discussing them.

“This is the only way we can make a change,” said Ms. Mkrtchyan. “Hiding these problems will not solve these problems.” Then she heard about Social Innovation Camp. Kicked off in 2008 and funded by international organizations, the workshop is a two-day competition that travels to different regions and helps participants implement ideas—government accountability, environmental protection, consumer rating—through social media tools and digital technologies. On April 8, the camp came to the Caucasus, where participants from Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan worked together in Tbilisi to design, code and develop websites in less than 48 hours. Out of the dozens of ideas submitted prior to the camp’s start, only six were chosen by the judges.

One of those ideas was Ms. Mkrtchyan’s.

“I didn’t expect that I would be accepted. I was very excited when I found out,” she said, adding that this was just the motivation she needed to get her project started.

Brave New (Digital) World

The camp in Tbilisi served as a practical workshop alongside “Social Media for Social Change,” a conference supported by a number of international NGOs, including PH International and the Open Society Georgia Foundation. Social media, also known as Web 2.0, has widely gained notoriety over recent years with the growth of blogs and popular networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Odnoklassniki.

But most recently, social media concepts have been used in spheres other than simple communications and networking. With SMS technologies, mapping applications, such as Google Maps, and open-source designs, such as Wikipedia, users are creating innovative websites that not only provide useful information and government accountability, but save lives, as well.

Experts point to Ushahidi.com, a site built in 2008 during the violent aftermath of Kenya’s disputed elections. The site made it possible for Kenyans to report, via SMS messages, acts of violence that were then pinpointed on a map for police, journalists or aid responders to investigate. The Ushahidi precedent was again used in the earthquake crisis in Haiti, where people reported urgent needs, such as serious injuries or lack of water, using mobile devises. The problems were then mapped and routed through to emergency response systems.

Other civic projects using Web 2.0 tools include sites in the United States, like Bakersfield.com, where citizens can report and map the location of potholes, bringing attention to city governments about the need to repair bad roads. Hyperlocal websites are also becoming popular, like EveryBlock.com, a project that aggregates news and consumer ratings about stores, restaurants and organizations in city neighborhoods.

For government accountability, traditional media outlets are harnessing digital media tools to solicit help from readers to create new databases, such as the recent example started by the UK-based newspaper, The Guardian. After Parliament released thousands of documents in the wake of the MPs’ expense scandal, The Guardian uploaded nearly half a million pages of official documents to its site for readers to review and earmark for further investigation. More than 26,000 people have analyzed roughly 220,000 documents since the effort launched in 2009.

Taking charge

Social Innovation Camp’s goal in the Caucasus, says its co-founder Dan McQuillan, was to foster the creation of similar websites that focus on specific needs in the region. One doesn’t have to complain anymore if problems aren’t being recognized, he said. Social media allows people to address these issues, themselves, without permission from the government or grants from NGOs.

“It’s about taking the power of digital technologies and making something happen,” said Mr. McQuillan. “It’s a kind of activism, but it’s not the normal kind of activism. It’s not confrontation; it’s construction. It’s about building things to make a difference.”

Douglas Arellanes, a facilitator at the camp, was a 2009 camp participant in Bratislava, Slovakia and is a strong advocate for the positive use of digital media. What the world is now experiencing, he says, is yet another period of transition; every generation goes through change, from the telegram, to the telephone, to the television. But human needs, he says, have always stayed the same.

“What we’re doing right now is simply teaching our machines something humans have known innately for generations. People are social creatures and social networks have existed as long as people have existed,” Mr. Arellanes said. “There’s nothing new about social networks. What’s new is that we’re using digital devises to mediate that social interaction.”

But ultimately, he says, it’s important to remember that social media is simply a means to an end and not the solution for social change, itself. “You have to be careful in promising too much in social media. It is a great tool, but at the end of the day, it is just a tool. What’s really important are the people behind it and the ideas being good.”

Recognizing the potential

At the camp, the six teams were divided among workstations cluttered with laptops, wires, white boards and countless cups of coffee. Each team, composed of members from at least two of the South Caucasus countries, had only two days to design, program and present their websites with business plans to the judges.

While Ms. Mkrtchyan’s idea, “NoProblem,” focused on raising awareness about social issues in the South Caucasus, the other five teams developed ideas around democratic, health and environmental issues. The final projects, which aren’t fully functional yet, include a multi-language website where users can rate public schools in the region and a website that offers information about reproductive health to Internet and mobile device users.

One of the projects, “GiveMeInfo,” was designed to keep track of Freedom of Information Requests denied by government ministries—an attempt to put pressure on South Caucasus officials who illegally refuse to release documents to the public.

For many in the Caucasus, the hope in digital technology can also be found in its enabling of cross-border communication. Aliyev Reshad, 25, is an Azerbaijani student currently studying and working in Tbilisi. When he heard about Ms. Mkrtchyan’s idea, he jumped at the chance to be on her team.

“I’m interested in regional projects, and I think this project will help to break stereotypes and bring people together by their problems,” Mr. Reshad said. “These issues make people from different countries talk not about the problems that break us into two parts, but about the problems we share.”

The winning project, “SaveTheTress,” was conceived by Mariam Sukhadyan, an environmental activist from Yerevan. The website will allow users to report, using photos, maps and SMS messages the illegal cutting of tress, a problem that Ms. Sukhadyan says has drastically increased over the last 20 years in Armenia. Her project was awarded $3,000 to help support the website’s growth.

While the website isn’t fully complete, Ms. Sukhadyan says her team will continue working on finalizing the details, translating the site into Armenian and promoting it throughout the country. She hopes the Ministry of Ecology and municipal departments will eventually joint the project, as well.

Ms. Mkrtchyan’s idea didn’t win, but she says she’s still passionate about shedding light on social issues traditionally kept under wraps in the Caucasus. She hopes to complete the website one day, saying the camp helped her with strategies and ideas for the project’s future.

“For me the strongest part was to motivate people to talk about problems, whatever they thought those problem were,” she said. “The main objective now is awareness, and eventually, we will see change.”