Everyday Disinformation in Armenia

A digital ethnography of how disinformation is lived and navigated in everyday life

StatusOngoing
Timeframe2025 – present
RolePrincipal Investigator
InstitutionUniversity of Sheffield

This project studies disinformation not as a top-down political campaign but as a lived, everyday experience. Using a digital-ethnographic approach, it asks how false and misleading information circulates through routine social and digital interactions in Armenia — a country shaped by a Soviet legacy of distrust and by ongoing informational pressure from neighbouring states. The work deliberately centres three groups often overlooked in disinformation research: young rural residents, displaced individuals, and older women.

Methodologically, it combines social-media "scroll-through" sessions, WhatsApp focus groups, and participant-kept disinformation photo diaries, co-designed with local partners through a workshop in Yerevan. Its broader ambition is theoretical: to develop the idea of "everyday disinformation" and to bring critical, feminist and Global-Majority perspectives to a field still dominated by techno-centric, Anglo-American frameworks. Planned outcomes include academic publications and practical, context-sensitive recommendations for civil-society organisations.

Funding

Independent Social Research Foundation (ISRF) — Flexible Grants for Small Groups

Collaborators

Dr. Ilya Yablokov — University of Sheffield (Co-Investigator)
Socioscope NGO, Armenia — Mariam Khalatyan & Arpy Manusyan (project partners)
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