Civic Activism as a Novel Component of Armenian Civil Society

explore the overall political culture in which new civic initiatives have to operate and to
juxtapose typical characteristics of a social media user and a potential activist to determine the
extent to which these two groups overlap.
4.1. Descriptive Analysis of the Survey Data
The first part of the analysis presents descriptive data on civic and political activism in Armenia,
noting changes over time whenever possible. The purpose is to clarify the overall environment in
which civic activism takes place. We assess the overall culture of civic participation by
investigating general public perceptions of social movements, membership in various formal and
informal groups and organisations, and volunteering. We then discuss political participation
because civic activism is very often not the end goal but a tool for bringing change, which is
ultimately a political process, often aided by political activism. We examine overall interest in
politics and conventional and non-conventional forms of political participation, the latter being
the most important since they are often utilised by civic activists. The third part of the descriptive
analysis considers the media landscape and particularly the use of social media as a source of
information. The purpose is to assess the potential for outreach using social media, which is
heavily used by Armenian civic initiatives to mobilise support and inform the public.
4.1.1. Civic Participation and Civic Activism
First, let us consider the overall public attitude towards civic activism. The WVS survey has data
on levels of confidence in two types of social movements: the environmental movement and the
women’s movement. For both of those movements, there are more negative than positive
opinions: in 2011, 31% say they have either a ‘great deal’ or ‘quite a lot’ of confidence in
women’s movements, compared with 41% saying either ‘not very much’ or ‘not at all.’ For the
environmental movement, the percentages of positive vs. negative responses were 36% and 42%,
respectively. The good news, however, is that WVS data show a clear increase in confidence in
the women’s movement: the mean, measured on a scale from 1 (“a great deal”) to 4 (“none at
all”) changed from 3.05 in 1997 to 2.74 in 2011 (note that higher numbers indicate less
confidence, due to the way the responses are coded). Judged by the simple measure of the mean
level of confidence, the general public’s perception of the environmental movement has not
improved. Nonetheless, when examining the response categories in greater detail, a slight shift in
attitudes is noticeable: fewer people hold strong opinions (either positive or negative), while the
percentage of those undecided has increased, as depicted in Figure 1.
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