At the beginning of last year, Transitions Online (TOL) published an article of mine as part of a small project documenting positive examples of ethnic Armenian-Azeri coexistence in Georgia. Ironically, even though Facebook had been the main focus of the article, TOL decided to publish it under the headline of "Twitter Diplomacy."

Although Twitter had been used for live-tweeting updates and images from the regions of Georgia during the course of the field work for the project, the only country in the South Caucasus where ethnic Armenians and Azeris can and do coexist, it did sound somewhat cool and I was pretty okay with the change.

With a peaceful resolution to the conflict over Nagorno Karabakh as elusive as ever, Armenians and Azerbaijanis are unable to visit each other’s country or communicate through traditional means such as telephone or mail.

However, as the local media usually self-censors or resorts to propaganda when it comes to relations between the two countries, can new and social media step in to fill the gap to break the information blockade?

The point of the article, after all, was still there, and Twitter was at least one tool used in work to facilitate and encourage cross-border communication since the micro-blogging tool really hit the big-time in Iran during the election held there in 2009. So important was Twitter for dissident voices, in fact, that the U.S. State Department even requested that Twitter not take their servers down for some scheduled maintenance so the information on the Iranian election, and more importantly the resulting protests, could continue. The use of Twitter during that time was especially significant for me as prior to its use in Iran, I really couldn't see what the fuss was all about. 

My first exposure to Twitter came in June 2008 at the Global Voices Summit in Budapest, Hungary. Having been blogging since 2005, the online world gave journalists, photographers, specialists and citizens the ability to self-publish their own reports, thoughts and opinions in ways that had been far more difficult or costly before. Now, as Global Voices Caucasus region editor, I was in the environment of a conference hall where around 200 people were sitting with expensive laptops entering messages of less than 140 characters into a tiny text field far smaller than their actual screen real-estate could allow. I'll be honest. I truly didn't understand why they would even bother.

The Iranian elections changed all of that the following year, and so too did my involvement with the London-based Frontline Club which had launched its revamped site with Graham Holliday, at that time my point of contact, pointing me towards the inclusion of a Twitter feed for their bloggers. Probably reluctantly, I started to slowly make use of my otherwise redundant and idle Twitter account for my own, especially when Guy Degen, another Frontline Club blogger, introduced me to the Nokia N82 smart phone. As a photographer, the N82's camera blew me away with its relative quality compared to previous phones, and with live video streaming also possible, Twitter became an important part of mobile reporting too.

Slowly, I started to experiment with the phone while on assignments and especially covering protest demonstrations in Yerevan, the Armenian capital. The public had become more and more impatient for real-time news and Twitter was mainly where it was at, especially as it could also be integrated into Facebook and other online services. In June 2008, for example, I live-tweeted a demonstration by Iranian students outside of their Embassy here, also sending out not only images, but also live video which came in handy during other protests too. Activists also saw what I could do with mobile phones, something that I'm forever grateful to Guy Degen for, and as a result of that work the main pro-opposition A1 Plus started to experiment too.

But this wasn't just about Twitter, of course, it was about mobile phones in general. However, it's role as a tool for activism had already been shown in May when a protest demonstration in Baku, Azerbaijan, saw activists and their supporters send out live updates on those who had been detained. It even allowed me to follow and report on the annual Eurovision Song Contest, something that might seem rather petty to most readers, but not when arch-enemies Armenia and Azerbaijan are involved. In July 2009, as David Brewer of Media Helping Media points out, Twitter was even crucial in first reporting the detention of two video blogging youth activists, Adnan Hajizade and Emin Milli, in the oil-rich former Soviet republic.

Indeed, some of the first contacts between Armenian and Azerbaijani activists came as a result of tweets via my own account. Still locked into a bitter conflict over the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh, even such communication was previously unthinkable. More importantly, it was open and via my Twitter and Facebook, many Armenians and Azerbaijanis made contact, something which continues to this day.

But that was then, and this is now.

In a little over a year Twitter has become even more important as a tool for activists, and in my own work on cross-border online communication between Armenians and Azerbaijanis it actually seems to be taking a more significant role than before. In part this is probably because in relative terms it seems to allow for more of the serendipity than others such as Global Voices co-founder Ethan Zuckerman believes is lacking on Facebook, and also because of my own concerns with saturation points being reached on the social networking site. Nevertheless, both are important. For example, although many people share links on Twitter, metrics for the Caucasus region show very few people actually click through.

Instead, Facebook is undoubtedly more suited to the task here with peer-to-peer sharing key to the actual consumption of information via link-sharing. The experience of others might vary, of course, but as an example, one recent guest post by an Armenian writing about her Azerbaijani friend for my own project was shared 105 times on Facebook. Metrics for Twitter and that post are now no longer available, but it is unlikely it was re-tweeted more than 7-10 times. Indeed, for the purpose of non-breaking news, Twitter's actual worth is probably negligible, but what I'm also finding now is that I'm making new and different contacts outside of the often predictable social and political networks which usually exist on Facebook.

More importantly, I'm communicating with them too, albeit in 140 characters. In fact, this had also been the case in the past, with connections made first on Twitter then being transferred to Facebook. Both approaches, perhaps, if used carefully, could overcome a lot of the criticisms made by Ethan Zuckerman, for example. And for others such as Global Voices and Harvard University's Jillian C. York, Twitter also overcomes another concern about Facebook -- the need for activists in sensitive environments to protect their identity. Unlike Twitter, Facebook has a 'real name' policy which leads social media observers such as Evgeny Morozov to consider that internal security agencies might actually want activists to use it. 

The reason why the KGB wants you to join Facebook is because it allows them to, first of all, learn more about you from afar. I mean, they don't have to come and interrogate you, and obviously you disclose quite a bit. It allows them to identify certain social graphs and social connections between activists. [...]

But anonymity can also bring with it some problems. Firstly, with so much information coming out of countries such as Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain and Libya in recent weeks, it is difficult to verify it, especially if those tweeting are using pseudonyms. Nevertheless, despite these problems, Twitter remains a tool just as Facebook does with the worth of both determined by how they are used and by whom. Combined, of course, they can be revolutionary and I certainly can't imagine my work now without either, and especially in the area of Armenia-Azerbaijan relations. In this context, even fake accounts can often result in some interesting and rather poignant 'dialogue,' as my own experience recently illustrated. 

To conclude, though, and as the U.S. State Department increases its own use of Twitter while putting the title of my Transitions Online article into a more global and humorous perspective, it's probably best to end with a video of a presentation by a friend of mine, Matthias Lüfkens, Associate Media Director of the World Economic Forum. Presented on a panel we were both on at the World Blogging Forum in Vienna, Austria, last year, it's precisely on that: Twitter Diplomacy. Oh, and in case you're also on Twitter and interested in the South Caucasus, I can be followed on my personal account at @onewmphoto and also at @caucasusproject.