On December 2, 2019 “National Assembly-CSOs cooperation platform” (hereinafter the Platform) held its regular meeting on the topic of “Hate speech in Armenian media: targeting women”.
The aim of the meeting was to present preliminary findings of the media monitoring on “Manifestations of sexism and violence on TV and online media: how gender sensitive Armenian media is” and to gather recommendations aimed at effective combating hate speech on media platforms.
The Platform meeting was attended by members of the National Assembly, officials from the Ministry of Justice, representatives of civil society and media organizations.
At the first part of the meeting, media expert Suren Deheryan presented the preliminary findings of the media monitoring on “Manifestations of sexism and violence on TV and online media: how gender sensitive Armenian media is”․
In the framework of the research three television channels and three online media outlets were monitored.
Preliminary results of the monitoring showed that gender related content made up only 5% of the total newsfeed and the number of gender-sensitive materials in online media were much higher than on television.
The monitoring of the TV channels showed that the situation is worse with the TV soap operas, where gender-sensitive attitudes are completely missing and derogatory stereotypes of women are being reproduced. Moreover, they also present the family model, family relationships and women in a distorted value system.
During the discussion on hate speech, sexism, discrimination on the media and online platforms, the participants made number of suggestions for improvement of the field.
