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Military Propaganda around the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War: Official Materials of Armenia and Azerbaijan Defense Ministries (as illustrated by the first day of the conflict – September 27, 2020)
Authors: Anvar M. Mamadaliev
Number of views: 190
The paper spotlights the now relevant issue – propaganda related to another round of the fierce Nagorny Karabakh conflict from September 27 to November 10, 2020, which over the past two and a half decades not only has altered the balance of regional forces, but also predetermined major territorial changes; the outcome of this, without any exaggeration, full-scale war is the victory by Azerbaijan. However, the balance of forces and outcomes of the conflict lie outside our research interest that is here centered on the forms, methods and content of the propaganda war which was as intense as the operations carried out on the front line. Moreover, the war expanded beyond the media of the opposing sides – Armenia and Azerbaijan – and even “permeated” into those of other countries, above all Russia and Turkey.
The paper, discussing the propaganda activities in the context of the Nagorny Karabakh conflict, applied both by the sides in the conflict and third countries, analyzes materials from the official military sources of Armenia and Azerbaijan, published on the first day of the war – September 27, 2020.
The paper briefly summarizes the theories of propaganda (H. Lasswell, W. Lippmann, J. Dewey), gives a historical overview of how strained inter-ethnic relations develop, delivers a classification of sources on the problem of propaganda. The analysis and classification provided covered messages by the Defense Ministries of the Republic of Armenia and the Republic of Azerbaijan on the first day of the conflict. The paper also identifies the methods used by the sides in their propaganda activities and suggests an overall assessment of their quality.