Weather todayFacebook activity: Armenia vs Georgia
The impression that Armenian Facebook users interested in politics are quite active, and the first “reviews” of more or less significant political, economic or cultural projects appear on Facebook, may be a misleading one because statistics show a different situation.
Specifically, socialbakers.com shows Armenia has 382,760 Facebook users, with Chairman of the Prosperous Armenia Party (PAP) Gagik Tsarukyan’s official Facebook page “Liked” by 24,000 users (about 6.3% of the total number of Facebook users in Armenia).
At least at first sight it is obvious that Armenia’s Minister of Education and Science, RPA Vice-Chairman Armen Ashotyan ranks 2nd. He is registered as an individual Facebook user and has a limited number of “friends” (5,000). He also has about 7,400 subscribers. That is, he has about 12,400 followers.
Raffi Hovannisian, Chairman of the Heritage party and one of the presidential candidates, ranks 3rd. His Facebook page, which was opened just a fortnight ago, has 9,300 “Likes”. Although a fortnight is not a long period, with supporters of the Heritage party being quite active, one could think Armenian Facebook users are no so politicized, especially when compared with one of Armenia’s neighbors, Georgia.
First, Georgian Facebook users are much more interested in political figures than their Armenian counterparts, given the population and the number of Facebook users in the countries.
According to socialbakers.com, Armenia’s population is 2.98m, with 12.9% of the population using the Facebook (28.1% of Internet users).
According to the website, Georgia’s population is 4.63m, with 20.6% (about 955,000 people) of the population using the Facebook (81.6% of Internet users), which is a rather high figure.
As regards political figures, Georgian Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili has the highest number of “Likes”, around 313,000 in that country. However, only 2/3 or 200,000 of them are Georgia-based Facebook users.
Georgian President Mikheil Sakashvili ranks 2nd – 227,000 “Likes”, with 177,000 of them in Georgia.
The media expert Manvel Martirosyan says that most “Likes” are “like dead souls on election day.” The real figures are seen from how many users are “talking about this.”
“Without accusing anyone, I can say ‘Likes’ are on sale. A person may order a page for his political team and purchase several thousand ‘Likes’ for a few hundred dollars. So we should see how actively people discuss the page,” Mr Martirosyan said.
Interestingly, only 4,900 of the 24,000 “Likes” of PAP Chairman Gagik Tsarukyan’s Facebook page are Armenia-based users, with only 76 “talking about it.”
With respect to party-affiliated Facebook users, RPA Vice-Chairman Armen Ashotyan, Secretary of the Heritage Party Styopa Safaryan and Artak Zakaryan (a RPA member) are “aces” who are most interactive.
Studio One