Bridging Caucasus Media Divide

IWPR has brought together a group of new and traditional media journalists in Georgia ahead of local elections on May 30 to set up a polling-day blog.

The blog at http://geoelection.ge/ will launch at 8 am on election-day, covering voting and its aftermath. It will feature ballot-related information, report, comment and multi-media material.

“For the first time in Georgia, traditional and new media will have a jointly-created media product,” said Dodi Kharkheli, who is one of the most popular bloggers in Tbilisi.

“I think it’s a timely and very interesting experiment. It will allow representatives of new media to find out how to obtain information, while those from traditional media will learn to take advantage of what the new media has to offer to them.”

The participants in the April 14 meeting came from the regional press and radio and television as well as various new media - including bloggers - and exchanged views about the advantages and disadvantages of the two disciplines.

The project has aroused a great deal of interest in Georgia. The meeting was covered by the country’s public broadcaster and became the subject of a BBC Russian service radio report on the forthcoming election. Various online and print outlets dedicated some 20 reports to it.

“We talked about the differences and similarities between traditional and new media, about the benefits and drawbacks of each,” blogger Dreamar wrote in his blog after the meeting.

“As representatives of two camps, we tried to make our respective media look superior to the other. But, of course, both have their drawbacks and positive sides.

“What we may see as the traditional media’s good part is that it has a big audience compared to the new media. But this, I think, is a temporary phenomenon. As active use of the internet grows, the number of new media users will inevitably grow. Also, the information is more objective. But the greatest shortcoming is that [traditional] media are vulnerable to censorship and journalists’ freedom is restricted.”

Dreamar also wrote, “New media journalists enjoy more freedom. The negative part is that the information is sometimes excessively subjective, provided from a personal point of view, and there always is a high possibility for it to be used by someone in bad faith.

“As new media representatives do not observe [journalistic] standards, such as the requirement to check information before publishing it, and feel less responsible, there’s a large chance they will end up disseminating disinformation. As for which of the media deserve more trust from society, this question is difficult to answer.”

Well-known blogger Tini Osephashvili said new media journalism has just begun to take shape and still had many drawbacks, but “as time goes by, it may become quite a serious force”.

A journalist from Kutaisi, Tea Zibzibadze, said biased views constituted a major problem in new media journalism. “They do nothing to balance their information,” she said.

This view is supported by journalist Marika Tsikoridze, editor in chief of the Reginfo news agency in the Kvemo Kartli region, who described new media writers as mostly one-sided.

“When you disseminate information, you must be aware of what it may lead to. And what they actually do is spread disinformation,” Tsikoridze said.

“The meeting with the [new media] journalists proved highly interesting,” said journalist Giorgi Siradze, who works for the newspaper Guriis Moambe and Guria TV. “Up to now, the two groups have tended to look down on each other. Now, however, we’ve discovered that we have a lot in common, and what’s more, we are capable of admitting our respective mistakes.

“Besides, now we have a common goal. We will be covering the election together, which will bring us still closer to each other, allow us to use each other’s capabilities in future.”

Blogger Dreamar said, “The idea to bring representatives of two different media to jointly cover the election and then compare the work done has appealed to me greatly.”

“We will not fail to make use of what we’ve learnt at this meeting,” blogger Pikolina said. “Indeed, it’s not right that we are subjective … We will tap into the professional journalists’ experience and at the same time we’ll show that we, for our part, can be of help to them, allow them to exploit the benefits of new media.”

Looking forward to the election blog, Tsikoridze said, “I expect to learn a lot from the cooperation with the bloggers [who], for their part, will realise that it is a great responsibility to be someone who disseminates information. We took criticisms that we levelled at each other quite constructively, and the coverage that we’ll contribute to the blog will show whether we’ve truly taken these criticisms into consideration.”

This will be the second special blog IWPR has set up in recent years. One created to cover the 2008 August war between Georgia and Russia was the only Georgia-based, Russian-language source of information during the five days the conflict raged, after nearly all Georgian news sites had been knocked out by a massive cyber-attack. Over the ten days the blog operated, it carried more than 550 videos, photos and texts and drew 130,000 unique visitors.

“The social and economic developments taking place in the world have caused information flows to change significantly,” IWPR Georgia editor Giorgi Kupatadze said. “Media that originally served as a tool to link different social groups has in certain countries turned into a powerful lever of control in the hands of political or business structures. This is where new media journalism comes in to play a decisive role.

“I think the goal of the meeting that brought together members of the two media has been fulfilled: they have sorted out their respective media’s pluses and minuses and embarked on a cooperation that will see hitherto taboo themes addressed and covered professionally.”

The IWPR Tbilisi office will host another meeting early in June to analyse the material in the election blog and identify the most active participants.

“The May 30 event is going to be the first practical test of how they, the journalists from the traditional and new media, can cooperate,” project coordinator Nino Gerzmava said.