Tag Archives: ict
Social networking site use in Azerbaijan
Tech inequality in Georgia
While politicians love to cite percentage of Internet users as a meaningful metric for Internet development, this may not be the case. In this example from late 2011 in Georgia, we use that the sociodemographic differences between those that do not know what the Internet is, those who never use the Internet, and those that use the Internet daily are stark.
Moreover, there are tremendous differences between what daily Internet users are doing online and what those that infrequently access are doing.
Capital-enhancing activities like reading blogs, reading news, or searching for information are much more likely when the user is online daily.
So what are these weekly and monthly Internet users doing? NOT MUCH.
Thus, be skeptical when you read or hear about X% of people in a country are online. That may include the old man who got online at an Internet cafe once 4 years ago. It might include the woman who only uses the Internet when her son opens Skype for her on a holiday to speak with distant family.
These individuals are not experiencing the benefits of the Internet that the daily users are. And given that those with daily access tend to be those already advantaged in Georgian society, the Internet may contribute to greater inequality as those with resources continue to gain access to more resources: a Matthew Effect.
Technology Inequality in Azerbaijan
While politicians love to cite percentage of Internet users as a meaningful metric for Internet development, this may not be the case. In this example from late 2011 in Azerbaijan, we use that the sociodemographic differences between those that do not know what the Internet is, those who never use the Internet, and those that use the Internet daily are stark.
What are Azerbaijani Internet users doing? If around half of daily users are noting these popular activities, where are the other half going?
Thus, be skeptical when you read or hear about X% of people in a country are online. That may include the old man who got online at an Internet cafe once 4 years ago. It might include the woman who only uses the Internet when her son opens Skype for her on a holiday to speak with distant family.
Azerbaijan is still in the early adopter stage of Internet diffusion. Thus it is unsurprising that elites are doing elite things online. As time goes on and more Azerbaijanis get online, it will be interesting to see what activities they engage in. If Azerbaijani later adopters are anything like those in Armenia and Georgia, we’ll see a tremendous gap between what elites are doing online and what everyone else does.
Technology Inequality in Armenia
While politicians love to cite percentage of Internet users as a meaningful metric for Internet development, this may not be the case. In this example from late 2011 in Armenia, we use that the sociodemographic differences between those that do not know what the Internet is, those who never use the Internet, and those that use the Internet daily are stark.
Moreover, there are tremendous differences between what daily Internet users are doing online and what those that infrequently access are doing.
Capital-enhancing activities like reading blogs, reading news, or searching for information are much more likely when the user is online daily.
So what are these weekly and monthly Internet users doing? NOT MUCH.
Thus, be skeptical when you read or hear about X% of people in a country are online. That may include the old man who got online at an Internet cafe once 4 years ago. It might include the woman who only uses the Internet when her son opens Skype for her on a holiday to speak with distant family.
These individuals are not experiencing the benefits of the Internet that the daily users are. And given that those with daily access tend to be those already advantaged in Armenian society, the Internet may contribute to greater inequality as those with resources continue to gain access to more resources: a Matthew Effect.
Azerbaijani government steps up its digital game
Azeri opposition daily links new internet project to presidential election
BBC Monitoring International Reports – Sunday, September 30, 2012
An influential Azerbaijani opposition newspaper has linked the launch of a new social networking website, www.butalife.com, to the 2013 presidential election.
The owner of the website is Ilham Abduyev, brother-in-law of powerful Azerbaijani Emergencies Minister Kamaladdin Heydarov, the Yeni Musavat newspaper reported on 21 September. Abduyev is also the owner of the azerbaijans.com and qarabag.net websites, which contain information about Azerbaijan and its breakaway region of Nagornyy Karabakh.
Second in Azerbaijan
“The name of Abduyev is rarely in the limelight and he is known as the person leading the emergencies minister’s ‘intellectual team’ and who is mostly engaged in creative activities. However, there is no doubt that the launch in Azerbaijan of an online social network calculated for the international audience could not be implemented without direct approval and financial support of Kamaladdin Heydarov,” the report said.
The newspaper described Heydarov as the second most powerful man in the Azerbaijani politics and said that given the uncertain financial prospects of the project there is likely to be a political aspect to it.
“The social networks are currently an important tool in the politics as well and politicians are using them to mobilize the electorate or organize protests of the disgruntled. Heydarov does not lack political ambitions and his name was often mentioned in the mass media as a contender for the post of prime minister or even president,” Yeni Musavat said.
2013 presidential election
However, the report noted that Heydarov is unlikely to oppose Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and cited an anonymous source in the government as saying that the website will be used in the 2013 presidential election to support the incumbent. “The emergencies minister is thus trying to prove that he is ready to mobilize all his resources for the third presidential term of Aliyev,” Yeni Musavat said.
The newspaper further quoted the source as saying that the Azerbaijani authorities are bringing in online PR campaign specialists from abroad in preparation to use the internet and social networking websites in the forthcoming presidential election campaign.
“The recent instructions by the NAP [New Azerbaijan Party] Political Council for the young members of the ruling party to become members of Facebook and to actively use it as part of this plan,” Yeni Musavat said. The newspaper added that currently the opposition supporters are very active on Facebook and other social networking websites and the authorities are lagging behind.
Abduyev’s remarks
Meanwhile, lent.az news website published on 13 September the text of an address by Ilham Abduyev concerning the launch of Butalife.
The website will be a “window from Azerbaijan on to the world” and the main objective is to “gain an international status and turn into one of the most trusted places in the world for social debate”, Abduyev writes in the address.
He added that the website will also be different from other social network by using online TV and news feeds from the most popular international media, offering blogging microsites and sections for examinations, tests and business.
BBCM note: There are no restrictions on Azerbaijanis using international social media sites such as Facebook , Twitter. According to the socialbakers.com website over 10 per cent of the Azerbaijani population (880,620 people) are Facebook users.
Please help support our research project
I am incredibly lucky to have some amazing research collaborators and friends. For the project that I’m about to describe, I’m working with three women who rock my world. Two of them are also academic mommies of young kids (together we have 5 kids under age 6), two are non-native English speakers working in English at a near native proficiency – which is awesome, and all three are great and funny friends who work exceptionally hard and are passionate about creating positive change in the region. Two are also well known gender and digital activists in the region while the other two are American academics with over a decade of involvement in the region. We are all deeply concerned about inequalities in the region, especially for women.
We are all also interested in the role that technology can play in helping to better the region.
So, with that gushing out of the way, I want to share with you our (Sarah Kendzior, Jale Sultanli, and Arzu Geybullayeva) research proposal.
Last year in running the normal analyses on the Caucasus Barometer to see what percentage of the population has access to certain technologies, I noticed that ONCE AGAIN Azerbaijan lagged behind Armenia and Georgia. This seems strange because they’re, on the whole, wealthier – and wealth is the primary predictor for technology ownership.
What I soon realized is that one of the reasons that Azerbaijanis are less likely to own and use technologies is that there are huge gender discrepancies.
I was really saddened by this and after sharing my findings with these wonderful women, we began chatting through social media channels and privately (sometimes in person, sometimes digitally) about these issues. We were all worried about this problem and what it means for Azerbaijan today and in the future.
We talked about trying to pull together a research proposal but we were all quite busy. I’ve been starting a new academic position, Jale moved to an entirely new country while working on her PhD, Sarah has been transitioning out of academia, and Arzu, as usual, has her hands in many projects. Sarah and I are also working on a few other projects regarding Internet in Azerbaijan (as we have in the past), but none with a gender lens.
But then we saw that Freedom House was hosting a contest for projects related to Internet freedom with public voting. I immediately emailed my lovely friends and suggested that this could be the opportunity that we’ve been waiting for to explore the question of what is going on with women and the Internet in Azerbaijan.
So we worked on our proposal and now we need your help.
Our idea is to run a series of focus groups in Azerbaijan to talk to women (and men) about what’s going on with women and the Internet. We’ll also conduct some interviews. After our analysis we’re going to disseminate the findings in an advocacy campaign.
You can vote on our project once a day for this entire week. Here’s the voting site. Please share.
I feel very fortunate to have the opportunity to work on such an important project with such amazing collaborators. We greatly appreciate your support.
Here are some images I made to promote it.
Azerbaijan ICT Trends
Azerbaijanicts
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Armenian ICT adoption – updated
Images from my #ictd2012 poster, plus some updates on April 1.
Some fun bits:
- 37% of Armenians have used the Internet — that’s some major growth, as you can see on slide 2.
- And Armenians are using the Internet more often. 22% of Armenians are online daily and 8% are online weekly. Big increases from the past few years.
- Those that are NOT online are more likely to be rural, poorer, less educated, and older — but when they were asked, most said that they didn’t get online because they don’t have a computer, followed by a lack of interest or need.
- From the original post I have the PC, mobile, and home Internet connection data from the Caucasus Barometer, the ITU, and Gallup. Based on methodology, I give the most weight to the Caucasus Barometer, but I figured that it’d be interesting to see how the three measure up.
In the next few days I’ll post online activities and some demographic breakdowns. As always, if you have questions, I’m happy to do some analysis for you. And, please link back to this post and/or give the proper attribution if you use these stats. This is the result of many hours of analysis and I appreciate your respect for my intellectual labor and property.
Armenia ict adoption ii
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Armenia ICT Adoption by Katy Pearce is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.katypearce.net.
Internet Tripled, Personal Computer Ownership Doubled last year in Armenia
My primary research interest is technology adoption and use, especially looking at digital divides (ownership and use patterns based on socioeconomic differences).
I’ve been studying these divides and patterns in Armenia for a long time. 2010 was a very exciting year for me (and Armenia!) because after many years of low adoption rates for personal computers and Internet, we saw some big jumps! Internet penetration tripled and personal computer ownership doubled between 2009 and 2010. Analysis and thoughts are below.
INTERNET
After years of single-digit Internet penetration, in 2010, Internet penetration in Armenia tripled from nearly 6% in 2009 to 19% in 2010, based on the Caucasus Barometer.
Home Internet Adoption in Armenia
| 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | |
| ITU | 2.00% | 2.90% | 4.21% | 4.41% | 5.86% | 5.86% | n/a |
| CB | n/a | n/a | n/a | 4.30% | 7.00% | 5.80% | 19.30% |
(ITU is the UN International Telecommunications Union, CB is Caucasus Barometer.)
Why did this happen in 2010? Probably because of mobile Internet. According to the Caucasus Barometer, 22% of Armenians have Internet access via their mobile phones (although the ITU says trhat only 5.18% of Armenians in 2010 had mobile Internet), most of them beginning using this service in 2009 or 2010. The mobile phone companies have a variety of options for mobile Internet, some of which are at low prices. 3 common ways that Armenians use mobile Internet are: 1) Accessing the Internet through a phone that has the ability to access the Internet, such as a “smartphone” 2) Tethering, a method to share the Internet connection on a mobile phone with a personal computer through a USB cable or a Bluetooth connection and 3) USB sticks that are plugged into a PC’s USB port and pick up a cellular signal.
And who uses mobile Internet in Armenia? Contrary to expectations that early adopters of technology are young, rich, educated urbanites, Armenians adopting mobile Internet are regionally-diverse: 37% are adopters are Yerevantsis, 29% are regional city dwellers, and 35% are rural villagers. They’re equally men and women. They’re young, but they are not teenagers. The average age of a mobile Internet adopter is 41. They’re better off economically than the average Armenian, but not extremely wealthy, this is all according to analysis of the Caucasus Barometer.
PERSONAL COMPUTERS
Another major event of 2010 is that Armenians owning personal computers has nearly doubled from 15% in 2009 to 27% in 2010.
Home PC Adoption in Armenia
| 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | |
| ITU | 6.77% | 8.32% | 10.23% | 15.40% | n/a |
| CB | 10.80% | 11.40% | 14.70% | 14.70% | 26.70% |
Why did this happen in 2010 after years of slow growth? Possibly because of the ComputerforAll.am program has lowered the cost of computers for some Armenians. This program that allows individuals to rent computers at a subsidized low cost. It was launched in September 2009. According to Armenpress, in early 2011, over 17,000 computers have been rented through the program. Within the program, laptops rent for between 11,400-18,300AMD per month and desktops for 11,200AMD per month.
According to the official website of the program: “The use of computers and the Internet access to each country’s economic development incentives are the most important and also have an important significance for the formation of information society. “Computers for All” program aims to significantly increase the level of use of computers in Armenia, offering software packages equipped with modern computers and buy them for the current credit solutions.”
The stated goals of the program are:
- expand the distribution of computer software packages in Armenia, equipped with accessible, but modern and reliable computers, creating an opportunity to buy in Yerevan, as well as regional residents,
- contribute to Armenia’s ICT sector by promoting the development of computer technology and software development markets development,
- prepare computer literate personnel, promoting the education of Armenian issues.
- to promote the spread of the Internet, increasing the number of users of electronic services and provide a basis for the introduction of government services, business sector, educational institutions within the framework, thereby contributing to the formation of information society in Armenia, and
- encourage the use of licensed software.
- And in a press conference, an involved party said… “The aim of the program is to provide 30 percent of Armenian residents with home computers” (Armenia Now 2009 HP article)
So did the ComputerforAll program meet its goals?
Has the Computer for All program met its goal of providing 30% of Armenian residents with PCs?
YES, but they said in 2009 that only 5% of Armenians had personal computers and that was not true. Also, since there was already an increase in adoption of personal computers, we cannot say that the ComputerforAll program was the only reason for more adoption of personal computers.
Has the Computer for All program met its goal of increasing Internet adoption?
YES – but could have been due to the mobile Internet increase.
Has the Computer for All program met its goal of expanding computers to Yerevan Armenians?
YES, in 2009, 33% of Yerevantsis had personal computers and in 2010 48% did. (But we cannot know if the increase was caused by the program.)
Has the Computer for All program met its goal of expanding computers to rural Armenians? YES – in 2009, 5% of rural Armenians had personal computers and in 2010, 12.5% of rural Armenians had personal computers. (But we cannot know if the increase was caused by the program.)
Has the Computer for All program met its goals of increasing computer literacy? NO – according to the Caucasus Barometer, self-reported computer skill has not increased from 2007 to 2010, with nearly two-thirds of Armenians reporting no skill with computers.
And according to the Caucasus Barometer, 24.8% of PC owners bought their latest computer in 2009 and 24.2% bought their latest computer in 2010, both possibly within the government subsidy program. Thus, although this program obviously does provide some computers to some individuals, it is still prohibitively expensive for most Armenians. Despite the government subsidy program, personal computers are still only available to the wealthier in Armenian society.