Armenia is recognized the most favorable country for development of media among the Caucasian states, says the Media Sustainability Index (MSI) report issued by IREX experts.    

The IREX experts gave Armenia 2.09 score, the highest score among the South Caucasian states. Azerbaijan’s score is 1.65, whereas Georgia’s is 1.85.

The report says three major developments in 2010 significantly impacted Armenia’s media sector and received a lot of attention by the MSI panelists. Among them is decriminalization of defamation, blog launched by Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan and increasing influence of online periodicals, citizen journalists, and social networking platforms.

“The last development incited tangible changes in a number of cases. To name a few, plans to demolish the summer hall of a downtown movie theater were revoked; amendments to the country’s maternity-leave laws limiting maternity welfare payments were abandoned; and several teachers were forced to resign after videos of their beating schoolchildren were widely circulated online. Perhaps the most unexpected event of the past year, the forced resignation of the Yerevan mayor following rumors that he beat an officer in the president’s protocol department, could also be partly attributed to online media and the blogger community, which heavily covered the incident prior to the resignation,” the report says.

The experts also mention country’s gradual digitalization process which is scheduled to be completed by 2015.