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Can Perfect TV help sway Armenian election results?

A case study in how disinformation and deceptive practices have become the mainstay of Armenian political content on YouTube.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not represent the opinions of the author’s employer.

Perfect TV is one of the most notorious Armenian YouTube channels. Such channels have gained prominence over the past 3 years in Armenian social media circles and currently represent more than 40% of all videos watched. Each such video receives an order of magnitude more views on YouTube than an average news broadcast or political content on the YouTube channels of traditional Armenian media.

Here, we’ll analyze just one of the most recent videos from this channel. It is probably one of the more “tame” videos but can serve an instructional purpose.

Given the wide reach of Perfect TV (among other similar channels), it singularly has the potential to affect the opinions of a large number of citizens and as such affect the results of the vote.

But first, what is Perfect TV and who runs it?

Assuming views from Armenian diaspora are negligible, as of April 4, 2021 the channel has a total of 382K subscribers (17% relative to Armenia’s adult population of 2.26 M) and 170M total views. In March, 2021 alone, its 11.7M views translated to roughly 5 views adult.

The channel’s ownership is obfuscated and generally features a single male voice (who doesn’t identify himself) with various images of political actors floating in the background.

The YouTube about page for the channel lists a singular gmail address as contact information:

Perfect TV is not the sole culprit in this phenomenon, just the largest one. And these channels combined control and lead the Armenian political narrative today.

Here are the top 10 most viewed shady channels to watch out for:

Vardan Ghukasyan has promised to enter the political fight by endorsing a party for the elections.

The title in Armenian is “Անիծում եմ քեզ վիժվածք. Հռոմի Պապը ալիևի տունը քանդե” and roughly translates as: “I curse you, you filth. The Pope tore down Aliyev’s house”.

Fact: The sensational title misrepresents that the Pope cursed Azerbaijan’s president Aliyev personally and that his lamentation on the fate of Armenian POWs was much harsher.

The video then transitions to the “support” of “loyal France” for Armenia. The narrator mentions that during the war Macron tried to call and send Pashinyan multiple letters in order to offer France’s support, which were ignored by Pashinyan.

The narrator then pivots to criticism of Russia (implying that it betrayed its strategic partner Armenia) and alleges that Russia is staying silent about Armenian POWs still held in Baku.

Considers it “odd” that first the former presidents (Levon Ter-Petrosyan, Robert Kocharyan, Serzh Sargsyan) met, then afterwards Putin called Pashinyan, and immediately following that the Constitutional Court of Armenia decided to strike down section 300.1 of Armenia’s criminal code, under which former president Robert Kocharyan is currently being tried.

At 5:52, the narrator says “it turns out that according to the Constitutional Court, violation of constitutional order is unconstitutional.”

At 6:13, the narrator says that “No one expected that after 3 years, the criminal case against Robert Kocharyan around the events of March 1 would end like this. Three years later, the Constitutional Court decides that this is an unconstitutional investigation.”

The narrator laments that while Kocharyan is still under trial (due to the 2nd “illegal enrichment” charge in the case), the main charge of violating constitutional order is gone.

At 6:45, the narrator claims that “recently, everyone was happy that the Robert Kocharyan case was going to go into the main trial phase and soon there would be a verdict on the Robert Kocharyan case. But that verdict didn’t happen because they were able to prevent it ahead of time.”

Fact: The Kocharyan case is only just now entering the main trial phase. There are hundreds of witnesses and Robert Kocharyan’s legal team has estimated that even if every witness is given 30 minutes to testify during the court hearings, the case may take more than 5 years from this point forward.

At 7:05, the narrator says:

“This is the style of such people. If you can’t buy something with money, then you can buy it with even more money. This has become the motto of Armenia many years ago.”

Fact: There is no evidence of bribery of the judges. In fact, the court now includes 3 judges that were appointed during Pashinyan’s premiership and approved by a parliament fully controlled by Pashinyan’s My Step faction. The decision itself was unanimous (with 1 judge recusing themselves).

At 7:24, the narrator says:

“Robert Kocharyan naturally won’t be tried for illegal enrichment. Robert Kocharyan already sees himself as a free man and soon wishes to consider himself as the leader of Armenia. This is what Nikol Pashinyan allowed. He allowed for the formers to come back, and to come back more rabid and in a more satanic style.”

At 7:50, the narrator says:

“And the people will bear the brunt of all of this. And they gather and discuss the situation and say that Serzh, Kocharyan, Levon Ter-Petrosyan, former Artakh presidents are people who effectively organized March 1.”

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Videos of the nature analyzed above are published every day by anonymous YouTube channels of shady provenance. They already have had a great role in affecting public opinion, societal divisions and displacing objective news content. But now this type of misinformation and disinformation runs the risk of affecting the upcoming elections on June 20.

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