This is really elections year and we all enjoyed it. Actually when blogs and whole new media were blocked and censored first time in Caucasus in Armenia it was not, that fun. I have been told, soon after elections, that Armenian blogosphere even used Azeri blogs to get information and post them. They have got information from international media, posted via Azerbaijani blogs. That’s very interesting! Now president of Armenia signed a decree to start independent investigation on issue. Will it be independent? Will it analyze situation on Internet and blogs?

Government still uses censorship of diverse types: Even film about Armenian republic in the beginning of 20th century was censored, because there have been shown some truthful facts about Dashnaktsutyun party, which still in political arena.

Here is a quick link to The Economist map how world will vote on US presidential elections, if they can. You see all Caucasus in blue, 2-3 days ago Georgia were for McCain.

In Azerbaijan just before elections, Russian day.az stopped forum about political issues, which is still closed. In Georgia, government at last opened all .ru domains for general public. Now you can open it freely. But what officials have seen during ‘ban time’ is that, people used a lot of proxi servers to go and read, what Russians write about war, South Ossetia and Georgians.

Actually Georgia is the most interesting country due to underdevelopment of blogosphere there. Just before the war and after elections I had great talks with international group of possible new media activists, which just wanted to spend a lot of money for new media in Georgia. But realities shows, Georgia doesn’t have many bloggers. There are few blogs, even in blogosphere Armenia is bigger, than Georgia. Azerbaijan is the biggest. Why it is so?

Georgians, often talking about more openness of media for public, which influence to the numbers. But it could not be serious. Then USA or any other European country with media freedom should have fewer blogs, than, let say undemocratic countries, which is not true in reality.

So actual stuff, that I discovered after some months of research: in Armenia we see a lot of people, that got an idea of new media from Russia, because Armenia is under Russian influence and Armenians mostly speaks Russian, better than Georgians. Also there are a lot of Diaspora blogs in internet, which boost the numbers. Azerbaijani blogosphere is unique with South Azerbaijan blogs factor, created from Iran and possibilities to create bogs in own language. There are none of these factors in Georgia and first question you will hear is: what is a blog?

So we decided just o start answering this question for wide range of people, show them how to create and start writing in blog. I couldn’t say that it was satisfaction for ‘donors’, which just have money for ‘Georgian new media’, which doesn’t exist in reality. They do not want to spent them in 2 other countries (it is usual in other fields too). So they have big troubles. Nowadays new media in whole Caucasus needs development not only from grass roots, but also from traditional media. Keep these directions and you will be successful, which is very hard with censorship.

May be e-elections is our future, but e-Democracy is reality. Sometimes it is hard to live without it, when you is ‘democracy addict’. I will write about it tomorrow, just want to add some funny story from Staffan Danielson, parliamentary from Sweden, with whom I met here in Caucasus. We have been talking about security situation, wars, pipelines and Russian policy, democracy and Internet. He said, that just before his visit to Caucasus his email address were published in different web-pages regarding to popular issue. And he has got many thousands of emails. So Email address is blocked and he could not answer or reply. This what e-democracy sometimes causes. Per-to-per is good, but not effective always.