The War and Armenian Online Media Outlets
As expected, sharp growth has been recorded in the number of visits to Armenian online media outlets due to the April war. In particular, throughout the first week of April the society was reading almost everything. Even people far from the Internet were visiting various pages to be informed on frontline developments as soon as possible.
Similar Web resource has already summarized statistics of visits to websites for April. Based on the submitted data, the list of 40 mostly visited Armenian news websites was made. Statistics of visits to websites for March are available in the Table as well.
As we may see, News.am was the mostly visited—18.3 million (in March—10.4 million). Visit to the website have increased by 7.9 million or 75.8%. Past.am is the second, however, growth is not so significant—15%. This, however, is conditioned by blocking of its Facebook page, which was informed by head of the resource. Visit to 1in.am increased by 73% or 2.7 million, reaching 6.4 million. However, there are websites, regarding which growth is more considerable. Visit to Mamul.am have doubled, and that of 168.am tripled. Visit to Hetq.am recorded fivefold growth, reaching 1.6 million.
Other websites won’t be separately touched upon, but Razm.info specialized website. It’s not included in the top, however, it’s the leader regarding the growth in visits to the website. Razm.info recorded more than 500 thousand visits in April, when in previous months it comprised 30 thousand. 16-17 times growth is logical. In particular, in early April interest towards the website was rather big, as it provided professional information, and besides, it was performing great work regarding clarifications in exact number of casualties of the adversary. In this regard Voskanapat.info analytical portal is noteworthy enough. Main audience of this Russian website is foreign countries (1/3 of visits belong to Armenia). 14.09% of visitors are Azerbaijanis. In April Voskanapat.info recorded 130 thousand visits instead of 110 thousand in April.
On the whole, 40 online media outlets in the list altogether have recorded 100 million 358.3 thousand visits. These very 40 websites recorded 56.4 million visits in March, i.e. the number of visits to Armenian online media outlets in April has increased by 43.9 million or by about 78%.
From these top 40 websites, only 4 have recorded decline. There is growth regarding Azerbaijani websites as well, however, not as much as in case of the Armenian ones. Total number of 30 Azerbaijani websites considered by us has grown by 40%. The mostly visited websites are: milli.az—10.7 million (instead of 743.8 thousand in March). As per growth haqqin.az is the leader, visit to the website has grown by 81% and reached 3 million 450 thousand. Moreover, this is the most popular website in Armenia. In April 11.09% of visits belong to Armenia (about 380 thousand). trend.az (4.78%) and day.az (2.53%) are also visited from Armenia.
It’s also worth touching upon Armenian resources—official websites of RA Ministry of Defense and NKR Defense Army. Certainly, they are not information websites, however, during the April war days they were crucial sources as well. Visit to MoD official website (mil.am) has grown 10 times—reaching 210 thousand from 20 thousand. And visit to NKR Defense army website has increased 43 times—from 5000 to 215 thousand. Moreover, 2.2% of visits to the page have been recorded from Azerbaijan.
It may be supposed, that parallel to the weakening of border tension the number of visits to Armenian websites will reduce as well. The number will be even less in May, as compared to April. However, it’d difficult to say whether it’ll exceed the index for March or not.
By Babken Tunyan
