Tag Archives: CaucasusBarometer

07 Mar

Azerbaijan Gender Issues Online

In honor (?) of March 8, a blog post on gender…

Last year I did quite a bit of work on gender and Internet in Azerbaijan. Here are two blog posts [1] [2]. Like in 2011, in 2012, there are almost no gender differences in Armenia or Georgia, so there is no need to write about it.

First, looking at frequency.

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While 14% of Azerbaijani men are online every day, only 8% of women are. While 58% of Azerbaijani men never go online (even though they are aware of the Internet), 65% of Azerbaijani women never go online (although they are aware of the Internet), and 17% of Azerbaijani women and only 6% of Azerbaijani men do not know what the Internet is.

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61% of daily Internet users in Azerbaijan are men. Last year this was 73% to 27%, so this is an improvement in equality.

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54% of male Internet users in Azerbaijan are on a social networking site and 43% of female Internet users in Azerbaijan are on a social networking site. However, because of the low percentage of women online, only 15% of all female Azerbaijanis are on a social networking site, while 35% of all male Azerbaijanis are.

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Men make up 70% of social networking site users in Azerbaijan in 2012. In 2011, men were 72% of Facebook users in Azerbaijan, so this is not a major change.

06 Mar

Protest attitudes in the Caucasus

Attitudes toward protest is one of my favorite Caucasus Barometer questions.

(Sarah Kendzior and I wrote a piece centered around this measure in 2012).

It is an interesting way to ask a question in a vignette format.

People are asked which statement they agree with and degree.

* Very much agree: People should participate in protest actions against the government, as this shows the government that the people are in charge.
* Agree: People should participate in protest actions against the government, as this shows the government that the people are in charge.
* Neither
* Agree: People should not participate in protest actions against the government, as it threatens stability in our country.
* Very much agree: People should not participate in protest actions against the government, as it threatens stability in our country.
* Don’t know

And with all of the exciting events in the Caucasus recently I was curious as to how people feel. And the analysis did not disappoint.

The collapsed analysis is a bit easier to follow. Two-thirds of Armenians think that it is okay to protest. 20% think it is not okay.
In Georgia, a little over half think that it is okay to protest, 17% think it is not okay.
And then Azerbaijan – 29% think it is okay and 43% do not think that it is okay.

protest collapsed

And non-collapsed is here.

collapsed

05 Mar

What are Armenians, Azerbaijanis, and Georgians doing online?

This demonstrates the percent of Internet users and percent from the total adult population that are engaging in particular online activities. To see more on general Internet, check this out.

This year there was no separation of Facebook and Odnoklassniki. I am under the impression,  however, that Facebook has sort of taken over.
armactivities

azactivities

Music and videos seem to be especially popular in Azerbaijan.

geactivities

Most Georgian Internet users are on a social networking site.

 

05 Mar

Armenian election attitudes

There was an election in Armenia, you may have heard.

The Caucasus Barometer asked people in November 2012 a number of questions, including some feelings about government and voting.

(Here’s some 2010 analysis on elections for comparison.)

Most Armenians voted in the last election.

election

And people weren’t sure if it was fair.

fair

And most Armenians said that they’d vote in the presidential election.

pres

 

What do Armenians think is the biggest problem? Mostly unemployment.

problem

And trust in institutions, where there is low trust in political parties and the court system.

trust

Fairness is an issue, as most Armenians don’t think that their government treats citizens fairly.

fairly

And what about protests? Most Armenians think that people should be allowed to protest against the government.

protests

01 Mar

Facebookistan.am, Facebookistan.az, Facebookistan.ge in 2012

fb

This is an update to this post about 2011. 2012 overall Internet use here.

All data is from the Caucasus Barometer.

We know that a larger percentage of Armenians (52%) and Georgians (43%) are online than Azerbaijanis (27%) and weekly or more often adult Internet users are 43% of Armenians, 33% of Georgians, and 19% of Azerbaijanis.

Armenia has 3,100,236 people, Azerbaijan 9,168,000 people, and Georgia 4,486,000 people – but that’s total population, we need to look at just adults (since that’s the data we have about Internet use – I fully acknowledge that teenagers are online and may be using social media). According to the World Bank, 20% of Armenians, 21% of Azerbaijanis, and 17% of Georgians are ages 0-14.

So, let’s take them out of the equation – (that’s 620,047 Armenians, 1,925,280 Azerbaijanis, and 762,620 Georgians) – and you have “adult” populations of 2,480,189 AM, 7,242,720 AZ, and 3,723,380 GE. So raw weekly or daily Internet users would be:

744,057 in 2011 and 1,289,698 in 2012 Armenia
941,554 in 2011 and 1,376,117 in 2012 Azerbaijan
1,042,546 in 2011 and 1,228,715 in 2012 Georgia

Thus in 2012, there are about 1.2-1.4 million weekly or daily Internet users in each country, with Azerbaijan having the most in raw numbers, despite the lowest percentage.

map_caucasus

In 2011, 6% of Armenians, 7% of Azerbaijanis, and 9% of Georgians (ADULTS) were on Facebook (let’s leave Odnoklassniki out of this for now). In 2012, 27% of Armenians, 13% of Azerbaijanis, and 30% of Georgians were on a social networking site.

Raw numbers then would be:

148,811 in 2011 and 669,651 in 2012 in Armenia
506,990 in 2011 and 941,554 in 2012 in Azerbaijan
335,104 in 2011 and 1,117,014 in 2012 in Georgia

map_caucasus

—

Socialbakers.com is a website that gives Facebook statistics. I’m not very comfortable using it because of its lack of transparency and because we don’t know where they get any of their data, but let’s see what they say.

ARMENIA
Total Facebook Users     395340 — I have 669,651 adults, so this seems off (although Odnoklassniki could be a factor)
Position in the list     112
Penetration of population     13.32% — I have 27% of adults
Penetration of online population     29.06% — I have 53% of adults

AZERBAIJAN
Total Facebook Users     1013080 — I have 941,554 adults, so this seems reasonable
Position in the list     82
Penetration of population     12.20% — I have 13% of adults, so this seems a little low for total population
Penetration of online population     23.97% — I have 50% of adults, so this seems really off

GEORGIA
Total Facebook Users     969840 — 1,117,014 adults, so this seems fairly close
Position in the list     85
Penetration of population     20.95% — I have 30% of adults, so this is off
Penetration of online population     82.84% — I have 70% of adults, so this seems okay

In the future I’ll look at socialbaker’s gender and age breakdown and see if it matches with what comes from the Caucasus Barometer.

—

(This is a copy and paste from what I wrote about 2011, but I wrote it in winter 2012.)

Okay, so back to my original point — I’ve noticed that the Azerbaijani Facebook and Twitter worlds is substantially more active than the Armenian one. (I acknowledge that I’m not up on what is going on in Georgia, but for reasons explained below, you’ll see that it is probably similar to Armenia). Why is this?

1. The raw numbers noted above — a lot more Azerbaijanis are on Facebook than Armenians. (I’m going to leave these countries’ diasporas out of this, but for what it’s worth, I feel like the Azerbaijani diaspora engages with Republic of Azerbaijan citizens more than Armenian diaspora do with Republic of Armenia citizens).
2. Because of the lack of free expression and assembly in Azerbaijan, most political discussion takes place on Facebook. Armenians can do this fairly freely in cafes or homes. Similarly, Armenians can organize and be political active in ways that Azerbaijanis cannot.
3. Language is a big part of this. As I wrote before, users of the Azerbaijani language are at a serious advantage over users of Armenian or Georgian because Azerbaijani uses the Latin script. This is also a special concern when it comes to Twitter and even more so when it comes to mobile phones (only the most recent Android OS has Armenian and Georgian, iPhone has it, but the others? No way). But my overall point is that there are barriers to Armenians and Georgians using these sites.
4. This is entirely speculative, but I get the sense that Bakuvians are just way more wired than Yerevantsis are. The Baku social media scene, beyond politics, is always jumpin’! There are a ton of Azerbaijani Instagrammers, Pinteresters, and other social media platform users. I just don’t see that same sort of scene in Yerevan. Yes, there is a bit of a FourSquare scene and of course people use these social media sites, but not to the extent that I see in Azerbaijan. (Although this may be a result of the sheer numbers!!)

I’m sure there are other reasons, and I’d love to hear comments…

28 Feb

New Caucasus Internet Stats!

Hoorah! It is finally time to release the new Caucasus Internet statistics from the Caucasus Barometer. The data is publicly released on March 1.

I have a TON of posts ready to share. I’ll cover activities, regions, gender, means of access, but let’s start with the basics…

As always, I welcome comments and questions.

map_caucasus

As usual, let’s recall that this is merely for adults (certainly there are a lot of teenage users!), but the ownership statistics do reflect households, so it is more inclusive of young people.

Also, as I discussed here, survey data is better than ITU or industry data.

So, let’s get on with it!!

First, let’s look at how many people ever use the Internet. This is not as important as frequent Internet use (because who cares if someone used the Internet once last year, right? That’s not the same as someone that uses it every day.) However, people seem to really care about this.

everuse

As of 2012, over half of Armenians, 43% of Georgians, and over a quarter of Azerbaijanis have ever used the Internet. Armenia made quite the jump this year. Notably, there was no increase in Azerbaijan.

Daily Internet use is a more important category – these are people that are potentially getting a lot out of the Internet.

dailyusertrends

As you can see, a third of Armenians, a quarter of Georgians, and 11% of Azerbaijanis use the Internet daily. Armenia has been making quite large jumps each year since 2009.

I also like to do a combination of weekly and daily users that I call “frequent Internet users” — while a weekly user isn’t reaping the benefits that a daily user could, certainly a weekly user is different from a monthly user! A monthly user is much more like someone that never uses, in my opinion.

frequentusers

43% of Armenians, a third of Georgians, and nearly 20% of Azerbaijanis are online at least weekly. This means that most Internet users are using a lot, which is a bit of a change from the past.

Now, looking at frequency distributions for just 2012.

inetfreq

As I mentioned above, the less-than-weekly users are fairly insignificant this year. But more importantly, the “never” used (which in this illustration I added the “I don’t know what the Internet is”), is still quite high in some countries.

Let’s look more closely at Azerbaijan’s frequency distribution over the past few years.

azfreqtrends

While there has been about a 10% drop in those that never use the Internet between 2009 and 2012 (and the bulk of that drop was between 2011 and 2012) and the percentage of daily users has doubled between 2009 and 2012, this is still fairly slow growth. (I get into some of the reasons for this in this article.)

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What about ownership? Let’s look at some trends.

Household Internet connection ownership (this does not include mobile Internet – I’ll deal with that in a forthcoming blog post) grew in all 3 countries this year.

homeinternetown

Nearly half of Armenian homes have an Internet connection with some major growth this year! (I’ll look at regional differences in a forthcoming blog post as well.) A third of Georgian homes have Internet and 17% of Azerbaijani homes have Internet.

Unsurprisingly then, these homes have a personal computer.

pcown

Elsewhere I argue that since 2008 when netbooks became available for a fairly cheap price, access to a computer is greater. Over half of Armenian homes, 40% of Georgian homes, and 21% of Azerbaijani homes have a computer. In all 3 countries, there was a pretty large jump from 2011.

And mobile phone ownership has essentially hit the entire population in all 3 countries now.

mobileown

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

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.

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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.