CB 2011 Preview | Attitudes towards IDPs in Georgia

The presence of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) within Georgia is testimony to its internal and cross-border conflicts. IDPs often face a life in limbo, unable to return to their homes and reliant on friends, family and the generosity of strangers to get by. To address this issue, and also in fulfillment of obligations to the Council of Europe, Georgia has developed policies on the integration and rehabilitation of IDPs.

As of January 2011, UNHCR-Georgia estimates that approximately 359,716 IDPs continue to live in Georgia proper. Preliminary survey results from the 2011 Caucasus Barometer show that Georgian attitudes towards IDPs are generally positive. More than half of Georgians support government assistance for IDPs, and view IDPs as part of Georgian society.

Results indicate that Georgians would like to see an increase in government assistance. 57% of Georgians say that the current level of assistance is not enough, while 18% claim it is. 22% of Georgians do not know if the current level of government assistance is meeting the needs of IDPs and only 2% consider the current policy of assistance to be excessive.

The survey refers to all IDPs in Georgia, not only those from Abkhazia or the Tskhinvali region of South Ossetia.

Over half of Georgians (61%) consider IDPs to be part of Georgian society. In addition 53% of Georgians disagree with the statement that, “IDPs are different from Georgia’s society”.

Data was recoded from a 5 to 3 point scale and the scale was reversed.The original scale comprised of strongly disagree=1, somewhat disagree=2, neutral=3, somewhat agree=4 and strongly agree=5.

On the whole, results indicate that Georgian attitudes towards IDPs are supportive. For those with further interest in the question, various crosstabulations should be of interest once the dataset is released. Also, click here for previous research CRRC has done on this topic.

This is only a quick preview of the results from the 2011 Caucasus Barometer, keep checking back for more information and the upcoming release of our results on ODA!

Framing the South Ossetian conflict

How does the Georgian media frame the conflict in South Ossetia? This is what Badri Koplatadze, who teaches journalism at GIPA, examined in a study. Not many surprises here, but we get a better sense of how the Georgian media approaches its reporting. Koplatadze analyzed 150 articles, published throughout the summer of 2004, when the most recent flareup of this conflict happened.

So what key words, sources and frames are being used? As the study shows, there's a lot to analyze.

This starts with the contested question of who the parties are: 48% of the analyzed articles (from the main three Georgia newspapers, 24 Saati, Rezonansi, Akhali Taoba) see this as a Georgian-Ossetian conflict. At the same time, 42% of the articles actually refer to this as a Georgian Russian confrontation (which obviously has implications for who you think should be sitting on a conference table, and may be reflected in the Georgian government's apparent strategy of "unfreezing by internationalizing").

And what do they call the conflict zone? 48% of articles talk about the conflict in the "Tskhinvali Region", whereas 42% call it South Ossetia, and only very few will refer to it as "Samachablo", its original Georgian name.

Did the Georgian media get all sides of the story? Not really: only 26% of the stories actually quote Ossetians' comments. The most frequently cited were Georgia law enforcers. (Presumably they were also most easily accessible to Georgian journalists.) Similar issues about accessibility may have influenced the selection of photos: 71% of research articles were supplemented by a photo, but these primarily depicted representatives of the Georgian government.

There is quite a bit more and details of the study again are online. I'm told it's based on so-called "frame theory", which is one of the ways of systematically analyzing texts for how they conceptualize an issue. See www.crrc.ge for more, or write to us.