About Media.am

Media.am

Media.am is an online platform for media criticism, media analysis and media literacy based in Yerevan, Armenia. Operating since 2001 as a project of the Media Initiatives Center, it occupies a distinctive place in the Armenian media landscape: rather than reporting general news, it reports on the media itself. Its stated mission, set out on its own About Us page, has remained consistent through several redesigns and changes of section structure — to describe developments in Armenia's media, and to present and discuss the issues, news and trends that affect journalists, news outlets and freedom of speech. Under the slogan “People are the Media,” the site treats audiences not as passive consumers but as participants who create, disseminate and discuss media stories in a new media environment.

For readers outside Armenia, Media.am is one of the clearest English-accessible windows onto how Armenian journalism understands itself. For readers inside Armenia — journalists, editors, teachers, students and parents — it functions simultaneously as a trade publication, a fact-checking service, a teaching resource and a public forum for debate about the standards of the profession. This profile draws only on verified sources, including Media.am's own About Us page, the Media Initiatives Center's published history and programme pages, and UNESCO's record of the 2017 Global Media and Information Literacy Awards. Where reliable public information is limited — for example on audience size, staffing numbers and day-to-day budgets — this profile says so openly rather than estimating figures that cannot be confirmed.

Origins and the Media Initiatives Center

Media.am cannot be understood apart from its parent organisation. The Media Initiatives Center states that it began its activities in Armenia in 1995 as the local branch of the United States-based Internews Network, and that in the professional community it was long known as Internews Media Support NGO. In 2013 the organisation was renamed Media Initiatives Center, a change it describes as the start of a new phase while maintaining its mission and values. The Center says it has worked in the Armenian media sector for more than 25 years, supporting freedom of expression and the establishment and development of independent media, taking part in improving media legislation and protecting journalists' rights, and building long experience in media training, media literacy and media content production. Its motto is “Information is Power for Change,” and its mission statement is to contribute to the diverse and harmonious development of society and the strengthening of democratic values through the creative and innovative development and dissemination of free and independent information.

Within that history, Media.am is the Center's longest-running public publishing project. The site dates its own operation to 2001, which makes it an early entrant in Armenian online media at a time when internet publishing in the country was still developing. The Center's wider portfolio over the years has included training for journalists, production work, education projects and cooperation with schools, universities, libraries and museums. Media.am grew out of that support-organisation context: it was created not as a commercial newsroom competing for breaking-news traffic, but as an analytical platform attached to an organisation whose core business was strengthening the media sector itself. That origin still shapes its tone and subject matter today.

Mission, Slogan and Editorial Idea

The editorial idea behind Media.am is stated unusually plainly. The site says it is a platform where debates on Armenia's media sector take place, and that it is attempting to develop the genre of media critique in Armenia. Media critique — sustained, evidence-based commentary on how journalism is practised, where it succeeds and where it fails — is a genre that requires both professional standing and a degree of distance from daily news competition. Media.am's position inside a media-support NGO gives it that distance, although, as discussed later in this profile, the same closeness to the sector has also drawn criticism from parts of the profession when its fact-checking judgements have affected other outlets.

The slogan “People are the Media” is explained by the site itself in two parts. First, people create the media environment. Second, as a result of new technological developments, people themselves can create, disseminate and discuss media stories. The slogan therefore links the site's two main strands: professional media criticism aimed at journalists and editors, and media literacy aimed at the wider public. If ordinary people are now publishers as well as audiences — sharing, commenting and producing content on social platforms — then understanding how media works is no longer a specialist concern. That reasoning underpins the games, handbooks, guides and videos that the Media Initiatives Center distributes through and alongside Media.am.

What Media.am Publishes

Media.am's publishing covers developments, trends and freedom-of-expression issues in Armenia's media sector. In practice, as its recent output shows, that remit produces several recognisable kinds of material. There is newsroom reporting about the media industry itself: disputes involving outlets and public officials, court cases with press-freedom implications, and changes in the legal and regulatory environment. There is critique: close readings of how Armenian outlets have framed sensitive stories, including coverage of domestic and sexual violence, the language used in headlines, and the way framing can shift attention from a perpetrator to a victim. There is international-context reporting, such as its coverage of the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index and what changes in Armenia's ranking mean. And there is verification work, published under its “Verified” fact-checking strand, which examines specific public claims and rates their accuracy against the documentary record.

A representative example of the verification approach is Media.am's examination of a public claim about a European Court of Human Rights ruling concerning the events of 1 March 2008 in Yerevan. The fact-check compared the claim made at a press conference with the text of the Court's judgment and its press release, and concluded that the claim was misleading, setting out the Court's actual findings on violations of the right to life. Whatever a reader's view of the underlying politics, the format illustrates the site's method: take a checkable public statement, return to the primary source, and publish the comparison. The critique strand works similarly, taking published coverage as its primary material and analysing headline choices, sourcing and language against professional standards.

Fact-Checking and the Fight Against Disinformation

Fact-checking is a substantial part of Media.am's identity. External assessments describe the site as a unique media analytical and critique website with a very strong fact-checking focus. The “Verified” section publishes checks on claims circulating on social networks and in public debate on an almost daily basis, according to research on disinformation trends in Armenia published by the Freedom of Information Center of Armenia. The topics are diverse, ranging across politics, public statements by officials and former officials, and viral social media content.

Media.am's parent organisation also took part in a notable platform partnership. In June 2021, Facebook announced that it was expanding its third-party fact-checking partnership with FactCheck Georgia — Georgia's Grassroots Reforms and Security Solutions fact-checking organisation, certified by the International Fact-Checking Network — to tackle misinformation in Armenian on Facebook and Instagram. For June and July 2021, FactCheck Georgia cooperated with the Media Initiatives Center as its local Armenian partner to verify Armenian-language content. That episode matters for two reasons. It shows that Media.am's verification work was recognised by an international fact-checking network as a credible local capability at a moment — ahead of elections — when Armenian-language misinformation carried real-world risk. It also generated controversy: the Union of Journalists of Armenia and a group of editors later issued a statement criticising the arrangement, arguing that fact-checking judgements transmitted to Facebook could restrict outlets' reach and advertising without sufficient discussion with the professional community, and questioning the transparency and impartiality of the selection of material checked. Media.am's role in Armenia is therefore not uncontested, and a fair profile should record both the recognition and the criticism: the site is an influential referee in a small and polarised media market, and referees in such markets inevitably face disputes about their calls.

Media Literacy: Handbooks, Games and Schools

If fact-checking is Media.am's most visible public function, media literacy is its deepest one. The Media Initiatives Center states that disseminating and educating on media literacy is one of its principal directions, that media education has been an integral part of the organisation for 25 years, and that it has produced programmes and films to help children and young people understand media better. In 2011 the Center launched a coordinated programme to promote media literacy. According to the Center, that programme included a media literacy course for schools, a manual, educational materials, training for teachers, work to integrate media literacy into general education, cooperation with educational non-governmental organisations, and use of public media to spread media literacy messages, skills and knowledge.

The programme produced the first handbook in Armenian titled “Media Literacy,” endorsed by the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sport, and used in trainings for teachers and instructors since 2011. A memorandum signed between the Center and the Ministry in 2017 was described in later policy documents as the first time the state gave prominence to integrating media literacy into schools and committed to supporting the initiative. Accounts of the programme given to academic and professional audiences describe some 400 teachers, museum specialists and informal educators trained in the handbook's use at that stage, alongside a memorandum of understanding with the Ministry of Education. Media.am itself serves as the programme's resource base: UNESCO and media-literacy commentators single out the website, alongside the Center's games and training resources, as the public home of the work, offering handbooks, guides, videos and games for professionals, educators and parents that help young people understand how media works, distinguish fact from fiction, check information, and learn about cyber security and digital rights.

The games deserve particular mention because they travelled beyond Armenia. UNESCO's award citation notes the “Media Battle” media literacy computer game, translated into Ukrainian, Belarusian and Romanian. Later commentary from the Center's own media literacy specialist, Lusine Grigoryan, describes “The Adventures of Literatus” as available in Armenian, English, Georgian, Polish and Ukrainian and actively used outside Armenia, particularly in Ukraine and Poland. The Center also organises Armenia's Media Literacy Week, the local edition of UNESCO's global initiative, held in late October or early November with state support, in which high schools across Armenia — along with universities, kindergartens and educational and cultural centres — run trainings, events and awareness campaigns. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Center framed media literacy as a defence against what it called the infodemic, arguing that disinformation and conspiracy theories around the virus and vaccination made verification skills a public-health issue as well as an educational one.

The UNESCO GAPMIL Grand Prize

The international standing of this work was confirmed in 2017. The Media Initiatives Center was awarded the Grand Prize — the top prize — of the Global Alliance for Partnership on Media and Information Literacy (GAPMIL) Alliance, established under the auspices of UNESCO, for significant achievements in media literacy in Armenia and the region. UNESCO's own announcement records that the 2017 Global Media and Information Literacy Awards were presented at the Global MIL Week 2017 Feature Conference in Kingston, Jamaica, and that the Media Initiatives Centre of Armenia received the top prize. UNESCO stated that MIC's Media.am website is the main platform for media critique and analysis in Armenia.

The citation details are specific about why the work was honoured. GAPMIL singled out the Center's work with the Ministry of Education and Science, schools and universities, its media literacy training resources — mainly the Media.am website — its games, and its regional cooperation projects. UNESCO also noted that the Center develops lesson plans, tips and educational games for schools, works closely with the Ministry of Education to integrate media literacy into the school programme, cooperates with libraries and museums in a combined media, information and library approach, and has run joint projects with Azerbaijani and Turkish partners using film and media literacy for communication, collaboration and intercultural dialogue. For a small country's NGO-run website, that is an unusually concrete international endorsement, and it anchors Media.am's claim to be more than a commentary blog: it is the publishing arm of an award-winning education programme.

Armenia's Media Environment as Its Context

Media.am's subject matter is shaped by the environment it covers. Its own reporting on the Reporters Without Borders index describes an Armenian press-freedom environment shaped by deepening polarisation, disinformation and growing hate speech, with most broadcast and print media still influenced by political and commercial interests in ways that pressure editorial policy, and with independent newsrooms performing essential oversight work but remaining limited in number. It also reports that legal norms governing the sector still do not adequately protect press freedom or fully comply with European standards, that problems around combating disinformation and judicial restrictions on publication remain unresolved, and that refusals, delays and other barriers often hinder access to state information. Those are Media.am's characterisations of reporting by international monitors rather than neutral facts, and readers should treat them as the site's documented editorial framing of its beat.

Structural features of the Armenian market also matter. Presentations by the Center's staff to academic audiences have noted that television has historically been the most influential medium in Armenia, that around a million Armenians were on Facebook at the time of one such presentation, and that international surveys long categorised the Armenian press as not free while rating the internet more favourably — one reason an online platform could become the main venue for media critique. More recent research on disinformation in Armenia notes that social media is now the primary news source for a large share of the population, which has shifted Media.am's verification attention toward Facebook and Instagram content. The site's evolution from print-and-broadcast criticism toward social-platform fact-checking mirrors that audience shift.

Audience, Reach and What Is Not Publicly Verified

A directory profile should be candid about the limits of the public record. Media.am does not, in the sources consulted for this profile, publish audited audience figures, monthly visitor numbers, staffing counts or a detailed public funding breakdown for the website itself, and no reliable independent circulation or traffic audit for the site was found during research. It would therefore be wrong to assign it a readership number. What can be said on verified evidence is qualitative: UNESCO describes Media.am as the main platform for media critique and analysis in Armenia; the Media Initiatives Center is a long-established and internationally recognised organisation within the Armenian media community; the site has published continuously since 2001; its fact-checking was selected for an international platform partnership in 2021; and its media literacy resources are used in schools across Armenia and, in the case of its games, in several other countries. Its influence is best understood as professional and educational rather than mass-market: it is read by the people who make, teach about and regulate Armenian media, and its materials reach a much wider public indirectly through classrooms and teacher training.

Similarly, while the parent Center's general model as a non-governmental organisation working on grant-funded programmes is well documented, specific donors, budgets or staff lists for Media.am in a given year should not be stated without a current primary source. Readers who need that level of detail should consult the Media Initiatives Center's own current reporting. This restraint is deliberate: Media.am's own work is built on the principle that claims should be checkable against sources, and a profile of the site should meet the same standard it applies to others.

Place in Armenian Media and Continuing Role

After more than two decades online, Media.am's continuing role rests on three pillars, all verifiable from the record set out above. The first is criticism: it remains a dedicated venue for developing media critique as a genre in Armenia, examining how stories are framed, sourced and headlined, and hosting debate about the profession's standards. The second is verification: through its “Verified” fact-checking work it tests public claims against primary documents and official data, work that has at times been controversial precisely because it has consequences for the outlets and speakers checked. The third is education: as the resource base of the Media Initiatives Center's media literacy programme — the programme that produced Armenia's first Armenian-language media literacy handbook, teacher training, educational games in multiple languages, an annual Media Literacy Week and the 2017 UNESCO GAPMIL Grand Prize — Media.am connects newsroom practice to classroom practice.

Based in Yerevan and published online, Media.am is therefore best classified not as a general news outlet but as a specialist online publication about media itself: part trade journal, part fact-checker, part teaching library. Its slogan summarises its wager. If people are the media — creating, sharing and discussing stories as well as consuming them — then a healthier media environment depends as much on literate audiences as on professional journalists. Media.am has spent since 2001 working on both sides of that equation, and the international recognition its parent centre received in 2017 suggests that, by the standards of media literacy work in the region, it has done so with unusual effect.