Mass media have always played a key role in society. As early as the mid-20th century, American researcher Harold Lasswell identified not only the collection, selection, and dissemination of information as media functions but also the formation of public opinion and the transmission of cultural values. Today, despite changes in technology and media system structures, the media remain a powerful tool influencing people’s perceptions of the world and their system of values.
In the modern media landscape, the dialogue on values is becoming increasingly open, especially with the rise of digital platforms. This process has also affected Armenia, where journalism is actively adapting to the online environment, and the national media system continues to evolve. However, research on Armenian media remains scarce. While individual articles, comments, and opinions offer fragmented insights, a systematic analysis of the value orientations promoted by Armenian news outlets is virtually nonexistent.
To do so, we examine publications from three of the most popular Armenian online news platforms: news.am, 1in.am, and tert.am, selected based on traffic data from SimilarWeb (2019). By analyzing their content, we aim to identify the dominant values shaping modern Armenian society and explore how these values are represented in the country’s media landscape.
The research covers the period from June 2018 to March 2019, a significant timeframe that captures Armenian media during the post-Velvet Revolution era but before the global disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic. This period provides valuable insights into how values were reflected in Armenian online media during a time of political transformation and social change.
To develop a comprehensive understanding of the Armenian online media landscape, we analyzed several key performance indicators:
These metrics helped us identify the most influential news platforms and understand audience engagement patterns across the Armenian digital media ecosystem.
The research employs the World Values Survey (WVS) framework, a global research project that has studied values and beliefs across cultures since 1981. The WVS identifies two key dimensions of cross-cultural variation:
For our research, we analyzed 362 articles from the three most viewed Armenian internet media outlets — news.am (280 publications), 1in.am (56 publications), and tert.am (36 publications). The number of articles studied was determined based on the frequency with which each media outlet publishes content throughout the day. These articles belong to the time period from June 2018 to March 2019.
We selected a sufficient number of articles for research using the constructed week sampling method, as it allows for more objective material selection. This way, we obtained a complete picture of publications and the values reflected in them over a year, regardless of climatic and seasonal factors.
During our analysis of the publications, we determined:
We selected the four groups of values—survival, self-expression, traditional, and secular-rational—based on the World Values Survey, in which:
The first and fundamental factor of our research is the value reflected in the publication. The distribution of survival values, self-expression values, traditional values, and secular-rational values across all three media outlets occurs as follows. The most common is the value of self-expression in 42.2% of cases. The opposite value — survival — appears almost as frequently at 31.2%. It should be noted that both groups are directly opposite to each other, and in principle, the appearance of both in more or less equal conditions is quite a specific feature.
High results related to survival values are not at all strange for Armenia as a developing country. But another high result demands attention — more than 42% of self-expression values, which are not characteristic of countries like the Republic of Armenia. As we noted earlier, countries with high indicators of self-expression typically have stable economic situations, high salaries, which help people abstract themselves from problems of economic and physical security, constraint, submissiveness, and provides opportunities for self-realization, the fight for rights and freedom.
In third place with 17.2% are traditional values, leaving behind secular-rational values with 14.9%. In this regard, the prevalence of traditional values does not create questions because, again drawing on research conducted several times by the World Values Survey in Armenia, it was found that Armenia, like its surrounding neighbors, is closer to the axis with traditional values.
Thus, we can say that the media support the interests and preferences of the citizens of their country and cover events in this context as well. But the nearly «catching up result» of secular-rational values indicates that Armenia is striving for change and moving in the direction of developed countries.
Despite the fact that journalists write most about self-expression values, the leader in the largest number of publications are articles on the topic of economic and physical security — 20.1%. Consequently, we can assert that despite the aspiration for non-material values/benefits, which occupy the 3rd position in terms of citation (8.1%), the media still give enormous space to issues of survival.
The issue of economic security was rather associated in the summer-winter period with the expectation of an economic crisis due to the change of power in the country. But which never followed. Physical security can be explained by the conflict situation related to Artsakh, but not by crime.
Of all three sources, the most «balanced» but contradictory is news.am. The resource does not adhere to a specific position in the preference for coverage of a particular group of values. 33.6% are publications with survival values, 39.2% — self-expression, 15.8% — traditional values, 19% — secular-rational. This is the only media outlet that to some extent reflects all values divided into 4 groups. This can be seen in the example of the «self-expression group.»
Another characteristic we studied is the level of problem examination. In our case, this can be an individual, citizen, community, society, world, or country. We obtained the highest result in relation to the country — 42% of publications. Despite the fact that the data obtained in each media outlet differs quite significantly, for tert.am it is 42.3% of publications, news.am — 25.3%, 1in.am — 58.4%. It should be noted that the data from news.am and 1in.am differ by a factor of 2.
Such centralization of news on local topics, that is, consideration of the problem at the country level, emphasizes the relative closedness of the country, its involvement in internal problems. Though, it should be said that almost half of the publications related to the country are quite logical, and the opposite situation would rather cause misunderstanding.
The next level according to our data is the world. The global context is important for Armenia, based on its geopolitical location, the size of the country, and its history.
The next aspect we studied is the protagonist of the publication. Here it is important to note the clear uneven distribution among the people discussed in the article. Politicians and government representatives are the protagonists of 51.1% of publications. News about them appears most often on the 1in.am site (58.3%), followed by tert.am (53.8%) and news.am (41.3%). The relatively low indicator of news.am is related to the wider range of topics that the resource covers and their corresponding protagonists.
In principle, for a country that according to the WVS research is traditional and with survival values, such a high indicator is not at all strange, but rather most logical. In 10% of cases, publications have no protagonist at all. This is most pronounced on 1in.am: 22% of publications have no protagonist. For news.am and tert.am, these figures are relatively lower, at 5.3% and 3.8% respectively.
In second place by popularity, representatives of the sphere of arts and culture are protagonists in 7.8% of cases. These are mainly lifestyle news, where the newsworthy event was the publication of a new photograph of some actress on social media, or another bold look from Kim Kardashian.
Speaking about the attitude to the problem reflected in the publication, it is also necessary to establish the subject of expressed opinion. We made the classification of subjects the same as for the protagonist: politician, government representative, expert (scientist, analyst, researcher), journalist (of this media, other media), representative of the sphere of arts and culture (writer, poet, director, actor), representative of a public organization, association, ordinary citizen, athlete, business representative, and church representative.
One of the characteristics of the article that we investigated is the attitude marker toward the problem covered in one of our 3 sources. That is, what connotation is present in the publication: positive, negative, or neutral. This category became the most contradictory of all we studied. The data varies across all 3 media outlets, with differences of more than 50% in one category.
Our hypotheses were that half of the articles would have a neutral connotation, and the other half would be a mixture of positive and negative connotations. Thus, overall, articles with a neutral attitude toward the problem constitute 40.1%, with positive — 32%, with negative — 27.9%. Here, it should be noted that our second hypothesis, that negative content would exceed positive, did not prove true.
The most striking finding is the apparent contradiction between Armenia’s traditional positioning in the World Values Survey and the values reflected in its media. While Armenia historically identifies as a country leaning toward traditional values and survival concerns, its media demonstrates a surprisingly strong representation of self-expression values (42.2%). This suggests that Armenian media may be ahead of broader society in embracing progressive values, potentially acting as an agent of social change rather than merely reflecting current norms.
Political figures dominate media coverage, appearing as protagonists in 51.1% of all articles analyzed, which aligns with expectations for a country with traditional value orientations. The strong focus on national-level issues (42% of articles) reveals a media landscape primarily concerned with domestic affairs, though global contexts also receive significant attention.
Economic and physical security remain foremost concerns in media coverage (20.1% of articles), reflecting Armenia’s status as a developing country with ongoing regional security challenges. However, the significant attention to non-material values (8.1%) points to an evolving society increasingly concerned with self-actualization alongside basic needs.
These findings offer a window into a media landscape – and by extension, a society – in transition. Armenian online media appears to be navigating between traditional values and progressive aspirations, between survival concerns and self-expression ideals. As both a mirror reflecting societal values and a potential catalyst for social change, Armenian media deserves continued attention from researchers seeking to understand the complex relationship between media, values, and social transformation in post-Soviet contexts.
The time period of June 2018 to March 2019 was specifically selected for this research for several significant reasons:
Political Transition Context
This period encompasses a critical time in Armenia’s recent history, following the «Velvet Revolution» of April-May 2018 that brought significant political change to the country. This timeframe allows us to examine how media reflected values during a period of political transformation and social recalibration, when value discussions were particularly prominent in public discourse.
Pre-Pandemic Media Landscape
By focusing on 2018-2019, our analysis captures the normal functioning of Armenian media before the global COVID-19 pandemic disrupted news cycles, changed content priorities, and potentially shifted value reflections. This offers a clearer picture of typical value representation in Armenian media under standard conditions.
Data Collection Timing
This period aligns with when the research project was conceived and initiated, allowing for real-time data collection and analysis. The constructed week sampling method was applied across this timeframe to ensure seasonal balance and representativeness throughout the year.
Value Stability
While values evolve over time, the 2018-2019 period is recent enough to provide relevant insights into contemporary Armenian media and society, yet offers sufficient distance for objective analysis. This creates a valuable baseline for understanding longer-term trends in how Armenian media reflects and shapes societal values.
The combination of these factors makes this timeframe particularly suitable for examining the relationship between media content and societal values in a transformative period for Armenia.