In this issue:

- VoteGeorgia.Ge

Georgia’s leading monitoring organizations - the International Society for Fair Elections and Demcracy (ISFED), the Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association (GYLA) and Transparency International (TI) together with CRRC launched a joint election portal, VoteGeorgia.ge, to track the events on Georgia’s local elections on May 30th. Besides observation of news and reports, the website features interactive maps created by CRRC, displaying real-time election monitoring data, voter turnout, and proportional vote results per candidate. By clicking on the map, users can browse monitoring data by precinct or district. CRRC is excited about the creation of this website as it makes election news more accessible to the Georgian public and sets a good precedent for data sharing between organizations in the South Caucasus. Visit the website to find out how your area did in the local elections.

- A screenshot from the website

* Report on Civic Advovacy in Armenia

The report on the Role of International Donor Support in Promoting Civic Advocacy in Post Soviet Armenia is already available. The research has been conducted by the CRRC Armenia fellow 2009 Kristine Hovhannisyan. For more information, write to Kristine.

- Pre-election Media-Monitoring in Georgia

The CRRC-Georgia’s media monitoring project iof the 2010 Georgian elections has been just finilized, having been commissioned by UNDP and funded by the European Commission. The broadcast channels monitored in Georgia included Channel 1 (Georgian Public Broadcaster), Imedi, Rustavi 2, Kavkasia, Maestro, and Real TV. The monitoring lasted for five weeks before and one week after the elections.

The monitoring measured both quantitative and qualitative aspects of the coverage: quantitative data was collected from the main evening news editions of the sic TV channels. It included an analysis of the amount of time that was allototed to each candidate adn his or her party, focusing on both the direct and indirect coverage and tone of coverage for each political party. Qualitative information was collected from both news programs and political talk shows. It examined any deviations from accepted journalistic practices, including analyzing the subjectivity of anchors and reporters, the primary use of facts in each piece, and the omission of hate speech, propaganda, covert advertising, or black PR in each presentation.

The data collected by CRRC was presented and discussed on the Channel I (GPB) every Friday evening in the specially designed program "Media Monitor". You can check out the reports online.

- Highlights of the Month

* Caucasus Review of International Affairs, Climbing a Mountain of Languages: Language Learning in Georgia by Hans Gutbrod adn Malte Viefhues.

* Visit our blog to get more news on CRRC’s work during the May local elections in Georgia!

- Selected upcoming events

* Fellowship Presentation: Orientation of Armenia’s Schoolchildren of Upper Grades Toward Higher Education: A Study of Motives and Values Using the Case of Yerevan, Yerevan, Armenia, June 16 — Anna Harutyunyan (ARM).

* Fellowship Presentation: The Role of International Donor Support in Promoting Civic Advocacy in Post Soviet Armenia, Yerevan, Armenia, June 25 — Kristina Hovhannasyan (ARM).

Armenia www.crrc.am Azerbaijan www.crrc.az Georgia www.crrc.ge