Your trusted source

“The Azerbaijani social media has created a negative environment mainly working towards the escalation of the NKR conflict,” media expert Samvel Martirosyan noted during the interview conducted by Panorama.am.

He is taking part in the international conference titled “Breaking the Siege of Stepanakert: 25 years later” underway in Yerevan.

According to him, the social media could serve as a platform for dialogue where disputed issues could be discussed.

“The platform existed until ten years ago. The Armenian and Azerbaijani forums featured sections that were strictly moderated, rude comments were forbidden, but the Armenian and Azerbaijani people engaged in dialogues over disputed issues. The situation extremely deteriorated when Ilham Aliyev gained presidency. Anti-Armenian propaganda became part of the state policy, which aimed at suppressing all those platforms where efforts were made to hold dialogues with Armenians. Those people who tried to engage in dialogues with Armenians were subjected to overt prosecutions. Those social network users who had Armenian friends in their fiend lists were slammed by the society,” S. Martirosyan noted.

In the words of the media expert all that lead to the situation when only hatred is spread in the social networks. S. Martirosyan said that today there are Azerbaijani social network users and bloggers who they interact with, however they are not many. Many people avoid open communication.

“Many Azerbaijani users publicly demonstrate anti-Armenian stance, as from some point they are blamed to be suspicious when they do not make bad comments about Armenians,” the expert noted.