Research-Driven Media in New Armenia (ReDriM)
Research-Driven Media in New Armenia (ReDriM)
Project Objective
The Research-Driven Media in New Armenia (ReDriM) project seeks to support Armenia’s transformation process by making quality data on social, economic and political processes available and by engaging journalists in its use, analysis and dissemination. It is a ten-month country-wide project designed by the Caucasus Research Resource Center (CRRC)-Armenia for the National Endowment for Democracy Institute.
The project’s specific objectives are:
- To make available a nationwide realistic understanding/snapshot of the perceptions, concerns and estimations of the public in new Armenia on political and socio-economic developments through the Caucasus Barometer survey, concurrently making an attempt to get a more nuanced understanding of people’s attitudes in Artsakh through a pilot Caucasus Barometer research effort.
- To empower journalists in Armenia and Artsakh, with a special focus on investigative media, representatives of critical, analytical and watchdog media, imparting them research-driven skills and knowledge, therewith enabling them to have targeted use of research findings and open data in order to reflect results-/perceptions-based information to the public at large.
Research Design
The activities of the 2019 wave of the CB included updating of the questionnaire, population sampling, interviewers training, conducting survey fieldwork/data processing and disseminating the findings of the survey through written outputs and a forum.
CRRC-Armenia cooperates with a wide-ranging network of journalists and media professionals to advertise the project and issues a call for application for enrollment. The project team evaluates the applications and selects forty candidates from Yerevan, ten provinces of Armenia and Artsakh for enrollment in two two-day long workshops aiming to assemble a representative group of participants with regard to gender, location, freelance/institutional affiliation, and area of expertise representing investigative critical, analytical and watchdog journalism and other media outlets. The priority is given to alternative new media representatives.