RFI launches Armenian-language desk

Radio France Internationale has inaugurated its eighteenth language service, opening an Armenian-language newsroom today, Monday, with a team of eight journalists and a mandate to reach young audiences through digital-only content. According to RFI, the new service will produce exclusively in Eastern Armenian, the official language of the Republic of Armenia, and will prioritise social media platforms including Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.

“Armenian youth, like most young people in the world today, are ultra-connected. Traditional media have been abandoned. So if we want to reach that audience, we have to go through social media,” said Astrig Agopian, the desk’s editor-in-chief.

The team’s primary aim is to inform, narrate the news and verify facts through innovative formats, drawing on correspondents based in-country. Reporter Lilit Shahverdyan, originally from Nagorno-Karabakh, will be deployed to Armenia from the end of May to cover the country’s upcoming legislative elections in real time, a posting she described as “a gift from heaven.”

Fact-checking will be a central pillar of the new service. Agopian warned that disinformation spreads quickly among audiences “not necessarily well-equipped to recognise false information, given how fragile the media landscape is.” The desk aims to provide both verified reporting and the tools audiences need to identify fake news.