Assessing EU perception in Kazakhstan's mass media

Abstract

This paper explores the mass media perception of the European Union (EU) in Kazakhstan by utilizing the content analysis of the major mass media outlets. The authors examine news reports and periodical articles from four major national Kazakh newspapers using three measurement points. The first measurement point covers the early 1990s when Kazakhstan declared independence and began to establish its foreign relations. The second measurement point covers the periods before and after introduction of the EU Strategy for Central Asia (2006–2008). The third measurement point covers the years (2011–2013) associated with implementation with the EU Strategy and assessing its results. Our main findings suggest that Kazakhstan's mass media positively perceives the role of the EU in the region. Moreover, they tend to portray the EU mainly as an economic powerhouse. Our findings support some suggestions by similar studies of the EU's external perception.

Hardly visible, highly admired? Youth perceptions of the EU in Kazakhstan

“…It is only recently that scholars started paying attention to EU perceptions in the region in the context of the rise of academic interest in how Central Asians view external actors. These include perceptions held by elites (Arynov, 2021;Peyrouse, 2014;Spaiser, 2018), by media (Bekenova & Collins, 2019;Ospanova et al, 2017), and by the general public (Public Opinion Research Center, 2014). This paper intends to complement this emerging literature by focussing on EU perceptions in the eyes of a specific segment of the population: the youth.…”