Political Activism on Internet. Case Study of Online Activity in Kazakhstan After 2011 Zhanaozen Clashes

Abstract

The purpose of this work is to investigate the quantity (how much?) and quality (what kind of?) of Internet activism regarding the Zhanaozen events in Kazakhstan. The role of Internet and social media for political activist groups in achieving their goals is highly contested in academia. The majority of the scholars studied this phenomenon regarding Arab states after the Arab Spring. This work examines online political activism in Kazakhstan using a case study of the Zhanaozen events which occurred in December 2011. To that end, this dissertation analyzed posts published on social media sites: Facebook, Vkontakte, Moy mir, Odnoklassniki and Kazakh blog platforms yvision.kz and horde.kz. All posts were studied based on the classification of online activism proposed by Sandor Vegh. He claims that all activities online serve for increasing awareness, advocacy of some idea, organization, mobilization people, action or reaction. This study concluded that a large part of online activism in Kazakhstan is aimed to raise awareness about events and promote certain idea with regards to protests in Zhanaozen. The examples analyzed in this study indicate that although some online calls for action resulted in offline activities, there is no clear evidence that social media played a critical role in the mobilization of people. Indeed, it concludes that mobilization of people through social media is very weak in Kazakhstan. In addition, the government does not only track public opinion in cyberspace, as well as control and regulate Internet by passing new laws but also it tries to influence public opinion on cyberspace, in accordance with Morozov’s contention.