Monthly Archives: February 2013

18 Feb

#armvote13 and #iditord hashtag analysis

Today Armenia has a presidential election.

I’ve been tracking the election hashtag #armvote13 as well as the election monitoring hashtag #iditord.

When I say tracking, I mean running #nodexl analysis on the hashtags. I explained how I did this for recent events in Azerbaijan here – basically why I am doing this, how I am doing this, what all this stuff means, and some basic methodology.

I’m happy to answer any questions! Also, you can click on the link and download the tweets yourself! It opens in Excel.

For the next day or three, I’ll download all the tweets every hour and upload new visualizations every few hours.

#armvote13 9pm Yerevan Feb 1
nodexl

#armvote13 10am 17 Feb

nodexl

#armvote13 6am 18 Feb

nodexl

#armvote13 8am 18 Feb

nodexl

As I mentioned on Facebook, group 1 is mostly foreigners who tweet about Armenia including organizations.
Group 2 are people IN Armenia.
Group 3 is interesting too – people who are in Armenia but may not be Hayastantsi. There are some diasporans that live in Armenia, the American Ambassador, a wellknown blogger who now lives in the UK, and some other Armenians from Armenia who are not currently on the ground.

I imagine that these groups will change over the next few days.

#armvote13 9am 18 Feb

nodexl

Here are links to the #iditord hashtag

#iditord 10am 17 Feb

#iditord 6am 18 Feb

#iditord 8am 18 Feb

07 Feb

Baby Makin’ in the Caucasus

There are a number of initiatives to try to increase the number of babies born in the Caucasus.

But how many kids do people want?

It seems that Armenians, Azerbaijanis, and Georgians have very different feelings on this question.

Also noteworthy is that only in Armenia do women and men see things differently.

But there certainly is a regional component to this.

am1

Armenians in Yerevan and regional cities only want about 3 kids, while rural Armenians on average want 3.47 (obviously not .47 of a child!)

az1

In Azerbaijan, there is a straight line from Baku, to regional cities, to rural people. But it is fair to say that Azerbaijanis mostly want about 3 kids.

ge1

Georgians, on average interested in having more than 3 kids, don’t differ regionally.

 

For other analysis on babies in the Caucasus, check these posts:

Qualities in boy and girl children

Too many boys in the Caucasus

04 Feb

#ismayilli hashtag analysis Jan 27 – Feb 4

Ismayilli isn’t “over,” at least on Twitter.

nodexl

full report

What is really interesting about this updated analysis is the exceptionally tight cluster in group 1 – full of foreign NGOs and news organizations as well as English-tweeting Azerbaijanis and group 2 is again strange with all of these non-profile picture accounts.

The tweets themselves are mostly retweets of news stories.

04 Feb

Low level corruption in the Caucasus

While corruption is without a doubt a major issue in the Caucasus, many think about higher level corruption rather than day-to-day corruption.

This is an analysis of the 2011 Caucasus Barometer. All differences are statistically significant. Although these questions were asked with a great deal of privacy, there is certainly a social desirability effect here.

People are asked if avoiding paying a fare on public transit was “ever justified” (scale 1 = can never be justified, 10 = can always be justified) and although this is a fairly low stakes behavior, people in the Caucasus were fairly (pun intended) against it.
fare1

And what about taxes? There are reported issues with people paying taxes at all levels. But again, people in the Caucasus were not keen on this.

taxes1“>taxes1

And everyone’s favorite – bribes!

No one in the Caucasus could justify accepting a bribe or present.

takebribe1

As far as giving bribes, few could justify it.

givebribe1

And when asked if they have given a bribe, NO GEORGIANS had given one! Wow. 6% of Armenians and 29% of Azerbaijanis though. This is interesting given the past two charts.

paidbribe2

Overall, I’m not sure if justification of corruption has any implication on actual behaviors of corruption. It might not be justifiable to pay a bribe, but you do it anyway.

I think that it is telling that Georgians are the least tolerant of all of these types of low level corruption activities.

02 Feb

Social media in the Caucasus Part 2 — չորս քառակուսի, dörd kvadrat, ოთხი მოედანზე

After yesterday’s post on my thoughts on social media in the Caucasus, I came across Foursquare maps of Yerevan, Baku, and Tbilisi. I love this sort of visualization and how you can sort of see the life of the city in it.

Foursquare is a mobile-based “game” (it gets its name from an American (?) children’s game where four kids bounce a large rubber ball between them in a square). One “checks in” at places. So, you’re at your kid’s school, you get on your phone and your GPS recognizes where you are and you “check in” to the school. Or you’re at a bar and you “check in.” If you’re the most frequent person that “checks in,” you become “mayor” of that place. Mayor is sort of meaningless, except when businesses give benefits to the mayor. The coffeeshop in my old neighborhood gave 50% off to the mayor!

Anyway, it is fairly popular amongst the geek scene in the Caucasus, so this is a little interesting.

Here’s Yerevan’s last three months of check-ins, as points of light

yerevanbw

And close up

yerevanbwclose

And the most popular check in spots in Yerevan (not sure if this is for all time or just recently)

popularyerevan

Here’s Baku’s last three months of check-ins, as points of light

bakubw

And close up

bakubwclose

And the most popular check in spots in Baku (not sure if this is for all time or just recently)

popularbaku

Here’s Tbilisi’s last three months of check-ins, as points of light (I cannot figure out how Foursquare spells Tbilisi, so I went to Batumi and scrolled over)

tbilisibw

And close up

tbilisibwclose

And the most popular check in spots in Tbilisi (not sure if this is for all time or just recently)

tbilisipopular

Here is the link for looking at most popular and this is the light visualization page.

02 Feb

Georgians are social, women get out less than men do, and other unsurprising findings

georgiasocialbigger

2011 Caucasus Barometer

FWIW, Armenia doesn’t have a chaixana/birja culture.

This was going to be the end of this blog post, but then I figured that I’d put a more interesting spin on it and look at gender as well. I noted some of the more interesting items, but please come to your own conclusions here.

genderbigger

ADDED LATER:

Ask and you shall receive! Here are breakdowns by region and gender and country for each of these activities. Certainly in the regions there are less opportunities to do some of these things because of availability (there is no discotech in my village!), lifestyle (I’m a farmer and need to get up early, so I can’t go to the discotech! or I’m a farmer and I’m too busy to hang out with friends during the harvesting season!), or cultural norms (maybe it isn’t okay for a village woman to do some of this stuff, while it would be more acceptable for a capital city woman).

friends

teahouse

restaurant

This is a good example where women in regional cities and rural areas are just not going out to eat, with little difference between the three countries.

bar

Here’s another interesting case – rural women in all three countries aren’t going out very often, although certainly in Azerbaijan it is less. But also note that few Azerbaijani rural men are going out either.