Download Spotlight on Azerbaijan - Foreign Policy Centre

First, the Azerbaijani government uses media coverage to demonize technology through framing. Framing
is when an aspect of a perceived reality is made more salient in a communication context to promote a
particular problem, definition, interpretation or evaluation 157 with cognitive schema 158 for
understanding 159 .
The Azerbaijani government-controlled media often runs stories that social media use with mental illness
and treason. For example, television shows describe ‘‘family tragedies’’ and ‘‘criminal incidents’’ after
young people join Facebook and Twitter 160 . Moreover, in March 2011, the Azerbaijani government’s Chief
Psychiatrist said that social media users avoid real-life communication, have psychological problems and
cannot maintain relationships. And this is “trickling up” to government. In May 2011, Parliament
discussed the bad influence that social media has on Azerbaijan and began proposing laws to curtail it,
which received substantial media coverage 161 .
Second, the Azerbaijani government monitors its citizens’ use of social media. Azerbaijanis believe that
their government is watching ‘‘everyone’’ on social media. In addition, there is evidence for this: users
have had their Facebook accounts as well as Yahoo! and Gmail e-mail accounts compromised 162 . This
causes self-censorship amongst those that do use social media while discouraging those too fearful to
engage.
Third, the government arrests online activists. In early September 2009, Adnan Hajizada and Emin Milli,
two young Baku foreign-educated elites, employees of international organizations and youth activists,
produced a YouTube video 163 parodying the government for spending hundreds of thousands of dollars
to import donkeys from Germany. In the video, a group of solemn journalists interview a donkey
(Hajizada in costume) and note that this donkey would be afforded more civil liberties than Azerbaijani
citizens, ‘‘There will be someone to protect donkey rights,’’ the video concludes, ‘‘but what of human
rights?’’ Two weeks later, Hajizada and Milli were having dinner with friends when they were attacked by
two unknown men. They went to the police, assuming that the incident would be investigated. Instead,
they were arrested for “hooliganism” and sentenced to 30 and 24 months imprisonment, respectively, on
November 11, 2009. Appeals by human rights groups and foreign governments in late 2009 and through
most of 2010 were denied. After intense international pressure, the two were released in November
2010.
Also, on the very day the “Arab Spring” began in late January 2011, state officials arrested former
parliamentary candidate and online activist Baxtiyar Hajiyev, who remains in jail at the time of writing.
Two other online youth activists, Jabbar Salavan and Deyanat Babayev, were arrested in February and
March 2011, respectively. Salavan was released on 26 December 2011 and Babayev confirmed to the
author in December 2011 that he was released although there was no press coverage 164 .
While the earlier cases had no mainstream media coverage, the 2011 cases have, which further
demonizes social media to the Azerbaijani public. 165
Activities
The few Azerbaijanis that do use the internet frequently, albeit cautiously, are mostly searching for
information. About half use email and Facebook (although that is only 7-8% of the total population).
157 Robert M. Entman, ‘Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm’, Journal of Communication, 43 (1993), 51-58
.
158 Cognitive Schema- the organization of knowledge about a particular concept. The schema contains the features or attributes that are
associated with a category membership. (Sims & Lorenzi, 1992) see
http://www.uri.edu/research/lrc/scholl/webnotes/Dispositions_Cognitive-Schema.htm
159 Zhongdang Pan and Gerald Kosicki, ‘Framing Analysis: An Approach to News Discourse’, Political Communication, 10 (1993), 55-75
.
160 Pearce and Kendzior.
161 Pearce and Kendzior.
162 Pearce and Kendzior.
163 The ‘‘donkey rights’’ video may be found, with English subtitles, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aaecvg7xCIk
164 Pearce and Kendzior.
165 Pearce and Kendzior.
47