CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2022
| Author | Abilkairov, Aslan |
|---|---|
| Title | Discursive Framing Manipulation through Social Media and Public Statements by the Authoritarian Regime: the Case of Kazakhstan |
| Summary | The use of discursive framing by the authoritarian regimes, especially in the post-Soviet countries, is not an understudied phenomenon. Multiethnic composition of the population, proximity to authoritarian Russia with its geopolitical ambitions in the post-Soviet region and absence of a well-established political system determined a complicated, at some points contradictory, set of legitimation strategies adopted by the countries. In this thesis, I aim to shed some light on the legitimation strategies adopted in contemporary Kazakhstan. In particular, the study focuses on the use of social media, Twitter in particular, and presidential statements and addresses in shaping political discourse in the country. Consulting various bodies of literature, including studies on authoritarian legitimation, digital authoritarianism, framing and international linkages, I research the case of Kazakhstan and advance a theoretical argument on how one can understand the dynamic changes in discursive framing used by the authoritarian regimes in response to salient political and social issues concerning the citizens of the country. From a methodological point of view, I try to capture the change in the dynamics of the use of discursive framing using a dictionary analysis and interrupted time series techniques to analyze the content of the tweets and public statements made by the President of Kazakhstan Kassym- Jomart Tokayev. Even though the results of the quantitative analysis are not statistically significant, the study exposed a couple of revealing trends. The first is that the periods of internal crises witnessed a heightened activity of President Tokayev in social media and traditional channels of information distribution. Secondly, statements communicating the stance of the regime on issues were made not only by the president, but also by the officials who have allegedly also taken part in affecting the framing advanced by the regime as a whole. |
| Supervisor | Melnykovska, Inna |
| Department | Political Science MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2022/abilkairov_aslan.pdf |
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