15 Sep

Media trust in Armenia – a methodological mess

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A few years ago I wrote a report summarizing a USAID-funded CRRC-conducted study of the Armenian media environment. They re-did this study this summer (no report seems to be available yet), but the data is up so I will be slowly but surely posting some findings.

Let’s start with media trust.

This graphic makes it appear that Armenians trust online media more than any other source of media. Wow! Go Internet!

trust1

But when you look at the frequencies, you see that Armenians were pretty ambivalent about answering questions on media trust. More than a third said that they didn’t know for every type except interpersonal (neighbors, friends, and relatives), local TV, and national TV. And many had “not applicable” (which I take to mean that they don’t consume that type of media). For what it’s worth, if don’t knows are higher than 10%, generally the question is considered “questionable.”

trust2

This is why even though I LOVE online data analysis tools, I get a little nervous about people just jumping in and making conclusions without understanding how surveys and statistics work.

More posts on this data to come!