For instance today, the news that highlighted the Kirkuk bombings in a Kurdish populated part received few likes, and interest. Meanwhile the story that went viral was about the Zimbabwe soldier who was kidnapped by three women, and held hostage against his will for the duration of four days, where he claims to have been raped and sexually assaulted.
Naturally curious to find out why sex-related articles received the most hits, compared to other news that were relevant to the Kurdish audience of Rudaw, I began to question the Head of Digital Media, Hemn Lihony. He explained that this is not exclusive to Kurdistan, but a worldwide fact, which is widely acknowledged, "This is not just in Kurdistan, people find politics boring or daunting whereas they tend to like reading about sex related news". When asked whether this had anything to do with the prevailing social structure in Kurdistan, he said "There is a general deprivation and lack of awareness in Kurdistan about sex, and the conservative norms probably contribute to this".
I browsed several Kurdish sites that are popular on the Internet; similarly the articles that were related to sex had the most hits and comments. Whether the social structure in Kurdistan contributes to this, is not something that I can answer, but these statistics are very telling.
