Caucasus: Apr/May '10

Over 16,000 hits registered on site, which was quoted in local media and used as source of unbiased information by journalists and politicians.

Local media across Georgia republished hundreds of items from a special blog launched by IWPR to report on the May 30 local elections in Georgia, which won plaudits for its speedy, comprehensive coverage.

“If anyone wanted to keep track of the voting process, I can say this blog was the best tool they could use to do so,” political analyst Andro Barnov said. “Personally, I received from it comprehensive information from almost all parts of Georgia.”

During the three days geoelection.ge operated, 422 news, video and audio reports were posted on the blog and it received more than 16,000 hits. It was quoted in the media and used as a reliable source of unbiased information by other journalists, politicians, political experts and agencies, including the Central Election Commission. The blog has done much to raise the profile of IWPR and has been commended by the media and the commission.

”I had geoelection.ge added to my facebook profile and I resorted to it frequently, as this resource was, unlike many others, regularly updated and diverse,” social media expert Giga Paichadze said. “Several times I saw [the blog] publish an interview at least forty minutes before ordinary media outlets came up with their own versions of it.”

“I liked the project very much, and I think it was a success. So many visitors and republications are, indeed, a serious result. I’d like to advise the Institute for War and Peace Reporting to continue to use social media capabilities in future. This blog is an example of how quickly it is possible to deliver high-quality information to quite a large audience.”

Political expert Ramaz Sakvarelidze said, “I was an active user of the blog, and it was very diverse, providing information from across the country. This is very important, since the ordinary practice is for the regions to be covered insufficiently during elections.”

“An election does not begin or end on the voting day. This is a lengthy process, and it is desirable that society should be constantly kept up to date on electoral processes. It would be good if you continued working in this direction.”

Politicians also praised it. Vaki Avaliani, spokesman for the opposition political movement Alliance for Georgia, said he had visited the blog several times and thought it was “a very interesting project”.

“I think it should go on in future,” he said.

Several local media produced reports on the blog’s work, and there were over a hundred cases of its information being reprinted.

“We, as well as news agency Interpressnews, have reprinted a lot of information from your blog,” said Irakli Managadze, director of news agency Expressnews. “Being the founder of a news agency myself, I perhaps should not be saying this, but you have beaten us all in terms of the speed with which you disseminated information. Way to go, guys! You’ve done a great job!”

Six bloggers and nine IWPR journalists contributed reports to the resource in what was the first ever case in Georgia of new media cooperating with traditional media representatives. The aim of the project was not only to ensure proper coverage of the election process but also to build mutually beneficial contacts between new and traditional media.

Tea Zibzibadze, a journalist from the Imereti region, who posted more videos on the blog than any other participant of the project, said, “We, representatives of the so-called ‘old’ media, have made good use of what the new media has to offer to us.”

“I am proud of having been part of the experiment. I heard so many people applaud our blog that for days I walked with my nose in the air.”

The blog was described as the most comprehensive source of information by journalists from different media outlets, including Salome Tsetskhladze of Rezonansi newspaper, who covered the election from the Central Electoral Commission in Tbilisi.

“There was a lot of exclusive information there,” she said. “A more important thing is that it was highly objective. Often, when asking questions at briefings in the Central Electoral Commission, I relied on information I’d learnt from the blog.”

By making full use of new media capabilities, the blog’s editors managed to ensure a speedy dissemination of election-related news.

“Bloggers are more sophisticated technically, which is why they could file news more quickly than anyone else,” social media expert and one of the project coordinators Dodi Kharkheli said. “Some of the bloggers worked live, covering briefings and press conferences with a speed that no media outlet, not even news agencies, could rival. The result of it was that many experienced and well-known news agencies reprinted news from our site.

“I think we’ve shown other bloggers that there’s a far more important role for them to play in society. They can become news providers and serious rivals of traditional media.”

There was a certain level of risk involved in the project.

“Despite having worked in social media for a long time, I was somewhat deterred when the IWPR managers first spoke to me about the project,” Kharkheli said. “What were the odds that the project would succeed? Would bloggers with no reporting experience whatsoever be able to cover the election process?

“But already within the first hour of the launch of the blog I knew this would be a successful project – the morning had hardly begun, but the news posted on the blog through facebook were already being actively shared.”
And the bloggers themselves said it had been a very rewarding experience.

“This was a great experience for me,” blogger Nino Paniashvili said. “Hanging around polling stations and running after people to interview from eight in the morning till 12 at night proved horribly tiring. But I took great pride in the fact we were the fastest of all and embraced information from across the country.”

“We covered the election with video, audio, text and photo materials, which was very effective both visually and from the viewpoint of credibility.”

Another blogger, Tini Osepashvili, said, “What made the strongest emotional impression on me was that for the first time I met and talked to people whom I only had seen on television before. I’d felt sick at the mere thought of having to phone a parliamentarian and ask him for a meeting, but just hours [after the blog took off] I became confident enough to literally fly, a flip-camera in my hand, on the parliament speaker I happened to meet in the street and try to interview him without any prior arrangement.”

Her colleague, Maria Rekhviashvili, said, “I’d never thought that collecting information was such a laborious process. I worked on my reports with great discretion, feeling ten times more responsible than when writing ordinary posts.”

Professional journalists, too, found working with bloggers useful.

One of them, Giorgi Siradze, from the Guria region, said, “Participation in the project has made me see that blogs are a fast and cheap instrument for disseminating information. To top it all, it is a multimedia tool, which means here, unlike in a newspaper you may be working for, you have a free hand to choose a ‘wrapping” for your reports, and they can be read not only in Guria, but in any part of the world. Which was the case with our blog – our information reached Georgians in Great Britain, the USA and other countries.”

“It’s great, I will definitely avail myself of the tool to deliver information from the region to thousands of people in the capital, and what I like most is that it won’t cost me a single tetri.”

IWPR’s purpose-made blog became a subject for a discussion on social networks.

“If you want to disseminate some information, you are constitutionally-empowered to do so,” wrote Giorgi Khatiashvili in his post on the businessconference.ge. “As for your blog, I approve of it very much, as I see it as an excellent example of civil activity. I just hope no one will want to impose censorship on it.”

Another participant of the forum, Medea Tskhvariashvili, said, “Nowadays, quite a large part of society – mainly, young people – tend to trust information placed on the net, even if it is a subjective view shared by a blogger, more than statements by professional people. Perhaps, this has something to do with a general distrust of journalists.

“I think that by arranging for bloggers and journalists to work together the Institute for War and Peace Reporting indirectly provided a sort of training for the blogger… The target audience could address the bloggers with questions and receive more or less satisfactory answers, an unaffordable luxury when it comes to journalists.

“When I say the target audience I mean teenagers in the first place (though older people, too, may be seen as part of it), those, who will be coming forward endowed with a voter status soon. This I think is a way to stimulate them, to prepare them for fulfilment of their duty as citizens.”