“Region” Research Center has published the “Identification and Transparency of the Online Media – 2021” report, which is part of the study “Transparency of the Armenian Media in 2021,” conducted in the framework of the project “New Media Environment – New Problems – New Regulations: for Pluralistic, Quality and Transparent Media in Armenia.”

The project is implemented with the financial support of the European Endowment for Democracy (EED).

The report presents: “How does an online media appear before its audience? What identification data does it publicize? And the transparency situation of the online media.” The transparency of 89 online media outlets was studied.

 “These same questions were in the focus of our study on the primary transparency of the online media a year ago. We examined the peculiarities and the degree of publicity of the release data of the online media (year of founding, data on the manager, information about the founding body, telephone, e-mail and address of the office, information on the rules of ethics). The chosen subject of research were 60 online media outlets and we were governed exclusively by the criterion of the presence/absence of the above release data on their official websites. We also limited ourselves to the media outlets which offered news and other articles on socio-political topics to their audiences,” the report informs.

It is noted that the smallest group involves the media outlets that have posted their corporate rules of ethics for their audiences and have publicly stated that they do have such rules of ethics. This is a group consisting of 5 media outlets only: Aravot.am, Hetq.am, Iravaban.net, Lragir.am, B24.am.

Included among the release data subject to mandatory posting is information regarding the editor/other manager of a media outlet. This comes the third in the least of nontransparent data. 72% of the media outlets have not posted any information on the name of the editor/any other responsible person.

The third in the list of non-transparent data comes the information about the founding bodies/persons of the platforms providing media services. 58% of the media outlets have posted zero data on their founding bodies/persons either on their websites or on social network pages.