Civic Activism as a Novel Component of Armenian Civil Society

information on the case helped identify key interviewees, who provided additional insights on
the cases and additional important contacts. Eventually, the process of soliciting names reached a
saturation point: any name provided was already on the list.
Thus, Electric Yerevan is the only case for which an observation method was utilised.
Team members spent at least 30 minutes per day on site at various times of the day. They had
general guidelines on what to pay attention to during the observation, but the overall observation
approach was kept flexible. Team members were encouraged to engage in casual conversations
or join groups. Observers took written notes after the visit; the protesters could have perceived
taking notes on site as suspicious.
3.3 Interviews and Focus Group Discussions
To explore the issues in greater detail, a qualitative method of interviews and focus group
discussions was employed during the research. We conducted ten focus groups: with leaders and
members of NGOs (four), civic activists (four), and non-activists as representatives of the
general, sceptically oriented public (two). Eight of those took place in Yerevan, one was in
Gyumri (the second largest city in Armenia) and one in Kapan: a town in the south with an active
NGO and civic activism community focused on environmental issues. One of the activist focus
groups was composed of Armenians of Diaspora origin currently living in Armenia, as they seem
to be a distinct type of activists. All discussions were organised and moderated by senior
researcher. The information on the focus group discussions is summarised in Table 1 below.
Table 1. Structure of Focus Group Discussions
Participants Location
FG1 NGO leaders and members Yerevan
FG2 NGO leaders and members Yerevan
FG3 NGO leaders and members Yerevan
FG4 NGO leaders and members Kapan
FG5 Civic activists Yerevan
FG6 Civic activists Yerevan
FG7 Civic activists Gyumri
FG8 Civic activists Diaspora Yerevan
FG9 Non-activists Yerevan
FG10 Non-activists Yerevan
We also conducted a total of 30 semi-structured interviews: 20 interviews with leaders and
organisational team members of the case study civic initiatives and ten interviews with leaders of
NGOs actively involved in civic initiatives. See Appendixes 1-5 for all the interview and focus
group discussion guides. The fieldwork lasted from August 2015 to March 2016.
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