Epress.am News from Armenia
Studying 5,000 Armenian online news media articles, New Generation NGO discovered that 65–70% of them contained negative treatment, hate speech and aggression toward members of the LGBT community and individuals or organizations who protected their interests or expressed tolerance toward them.
According to the report, only 10–15% of social media users published posts that protected the rights and interests of the LGBT community, and only 5–10% of these disclosed their identities.
"In the online domain of the Republic of Armenia, analytical pieces prepared by journalists and media outlets about the issues of the LGBT community with real people are practically absent. Usually, the most neutral [pieces] are brief news stories translated from foreign media outlets or short articles. There are articles that seem not to contain hate speech, but with accents and context they create an atmosphere of hate and intolerance. Often they are articles with journalism ethics violations or those that don't particularly convey news," reads the report.
According to studies on Armenia's news media landscape, the most fervid display of hate speech toward the LGBT community this year occurred on May 11, 2014, when Austrian contestant, drag queen Conchita Wurst won the Eurovision Song Contest.
"The clash of opinions, photo collages, and [social media] posts of show business representatives became heated after statements singers Inga and Anush Arshakyan made in an interview with Aravot.am, in which one of the sisters said, 'As mental health patients elicit repulsion, so too do such phenomena. My repulsion is like that. I don't have aggression toward but a refusal to accept such phenomena.'
"After Inga and Anush Arshakyan's statement, individuals who protect the LGBT community and mental health patients as a vulnerable group took a stand from a human rights perspective, the majority of whom, however, quickly descended into the arena of personal insults," reads the report.