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No Borders Here
TOL podcast: An Armenian journalist and an Azeri activist use new media
to breach the region's information barrier.
by Onnik Krikorian
18 February 2010
With the conflict in the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh still
unresolved, journalists and civil society activists in Armenia have few
opportunities to meet with their Azeri counterparts, and vice versa. But
increasingly, blogs and social networks offer new possibilities for
dialogue across a cease-fire line in place since 1994. Other online
tools offer immediate audio and video communication between the two
countries, free from monitoring or interception. If adopted as general
practice by journalists and activists, such tools could represent a
revolution in cross-border cooperation.
For this final segment in our multimedia series on overcoming
stereotypes in the South Caucasus, I interviewed Arzu Geybullayeva, an
Azerbaijani political and regional analyst, about her work on civil
society, women's, and cross-border issues using new media tools. It was
a rare direct conversation between Yerevan and Baku, conducted with the
voice-over-Internet service Skype.
Educated in Azerbaijan, Turkey, the United States, and the United
Kingdom, Geybullayeva worked as an Azerbaijan analyst for the
Berlin-based European Stability Initiative until December 2009. Since
then she has been a political officer with the National Democratic
Institute in Baku. She also writes for a variety of online publications,
including the recently launched Women's Forum.
I first contacted Geybullayeva in late 2008 via her blog, Flying Carpets
and Broken Pipelines, and remained in contact through online services
such as Twitter and Facebook. We met face-to-face last September in
Telavi, Georgia, to make a presentation on new and social media for
Armenian, Azerbaijani, and Georgian youth activists. We also visited the
nearby, ethnically Azeri village of Karajala and posted photographs,
accounts, and multimedia presentations on their blogs (see an audio
slide show about it here), a trip that became the forerunner of this
project.
You can listen to the podcast on the player or download it at:
http://www.tol.org/client/article/21189-no-bor ders-here.html
TOL podcast: An Armenian journalist and an Azeri activist use new media
to breach the region's information barrier.
by Onnik Krikorian
18 February 2010
With the conflict in the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh still
unresolved, journalists and civil society activists in Armenia have few
opportunities to meet with their Azeri counterparts, and vice versa. But
increasingly, blogs and social networks offer new possibilities for
dialogue across a cease-fire line in place since 1994. Other online
tools offer immediate audio and video communication between the two
countries, free from monitoring or interception. If adopted as general
practice by journalists and activists, such tools could represent a
revolution in cross-border cooperation.
For this final segment in our multimedia series on overcoming
stereotypes in the South Caucasus, I interviewed Arzu Geybullayeva, an
Azerbaijani political and regional analyst, about her work on civil
society, women's, and cross-border issues using new media tools. It was
a rare direct conversation between Yerevan and Baku, conducted with the
voice-over-Internet service Skype.
Educated in Azerbaijan, Turkey, the United States, and the United
Kingdom, Geybullayeva worked as an Azerbaijan analyst for the
Berlin-based European Stability Initiative until December 2009. Since
then she has been a political officer with the National Democratic
Institute in Baku. She also writes for a variety of online publications,
including the recently launched Women's Forum.
I first contacted Geybullayeva in late 2008 via her blog, Flying Carpets
and Broken Pipelines, and remained in contact through online services
such as Twitter and Facebook. We met face-to-face last September in
Telavi, Georgia, to make a presentation on new and social media for
Armenian, Azerbaijani, and Georgian youth activists. We also visited the
nearby, ethnically Azeri village of Karajala and posted photographs,
accounts, and multimedia presentations on their blogs (see an audio
slide show about it here), a trip that became the forerunner of this
project.
You can listen to the podcast on the player or download it at:
http://www.tol.org/client/article/21189-no-bor ders-here.html