Persuasion or polarization? LGBTQ+ attitudes among young social media users in Kazakhstan

ABSTRACT

Does social media exposure contribute to progressive or polarized views among youth? With a large and young population online, Kazakhstan offers a polarized authoritarian context in which to study the effects of social media. We use a mixed-method approach that contrasts wider statistical trends from an online survey and experiment with Kazakhstani youth aged 18–30 (N = 1027) and empirical data from 23 exploratory semi-structured interviews with mainly urban Kazakhstani youth conducted in the southern regions of the country in August 2022. The findings from both analyses show that the frequent use of social media positively influences Kazakhstani youth attitudes toward the LGBTQ+ community. We also causally identify that pro-LGBTQ+ social media posts in general promote positive LGBTQ+ attitudes but post wording may matter less. The findings from statistical and non-statistical analyses show the frequent use of social media positively influences Kazakhstani youth attitudes toward the LGBTQ+ community.

KEYWORDS:

• social media
• Kazakhstan
• LGBTQ+
• inclusive attitudes
• youth

Acknowledgements

We thank Jasmin Dall'Agnola and Cai Wilkinson, as well as two anonymous reviewers, who challenged us to be reflexive. Thank you to Arailym Seiitkhanova for Kazakh translations, proofreading and fieldwork, and to Abigail Scripka for help with in-country logistics and Russian interviews. We also thank Dina Kumarbek for conducting a Kazakh and Chinese language interview. Our gratitude extends to Eleanor Powell, who reviewed numerous research designs, as well as Steven Brooke and Hasaan Parker, for their experimental design suggestions. We thank Reed Lei and Rikhil Bhavnani for writing us references for funding. Many thanks to Nadav Shelef, Yoshiko Herrera and Mark Copelovitch, who answered conceptual questions. Much gratitude to our readers, Dagny Felker, Alexa Kurmanov, Alek Langford and Jérémie Langlois. We appreciate the Central Asia Barometer, ICVS, World Value Survey and Pew Research as invaluable sources for survey question wording. We thank TGM Research for running our panel survey.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Per PolityV, Kazakhstan is an autocracy. Magaloni, Chu, and Min (2013) agree based on the state’s failure to have a policymaking civilian government; multiple, competitive political parties in a legislature; an executive constrained by institutions or government; and open, competitive, free and fair elections.

2 See World Value Survey 7. https://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSDocumentationWV7.jsp

3 Also see the (Maiakovskaya 2016) article about public outcry in Aktobe.

4 Respondents answer, ‘How proud are you to be __?’

5 For Kazakhstan’s demographic data, see https://stat.gov.kz/api/getFile/?docId=ESTAT453226&lang=kk//.

6 See the Acknowledgements.

7 We recruited respondents via universities’, organizations’ and cafes’ social media pages, plus by sharing recruitment information on Twitter and Instagram. Interviews were held in cafes or outdoors to maximize privacy. Respondents could choose or change the location of the interview, provide oral consent for participation and/or direct quotation, as well as skip any uncomfortable questions. In Shymkent, we walked up to random individuals with our recruitment flier and invited them to participate.

8 The exercise of caution in Shymkent was sparked by one interview conducted in a respondent’s place of business. The respondent accused the interviewer of representing propaganda ‘from your country’ and angrily inquired whether any of the research team was a member of the LGBTQ+ community. The respondent’s frustration began when the researcher asked a demographic question about gender identity. The response was, ‘Don’t I look like a man? Tell me who I am!’ The researcher steered the conversation in a different direction, but the incident attracted attention.

9 Telegram is not just a messaging service. Users can subscribe to channels, which broadcast messages to a large audience of subscribers.

10 Respondents could indicate that they are not Kazakh or Russian. Also, smaller ethnic groups are not included in Table 5.

11 Time on social media is comparable in our survey population, who use social media from once a day to several times a day.

12 10th urban Almaty respondent.

13 4th urban Almaty respondent.

14 14th urban Almaty respondent.

15 4th urban Shymkent respondent.

16 12th urban Almaty respondent.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a 2022 Summer Initiative Grant from the Department of Political Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a Graduate Student Travel Award from the Center for Russia, East Europe, and Central Asia, University of Wisconsin-Madison, for which the authors are thankful.