From Social Media to Social Change: Online Platforms’ Impact on Kazakhstan’s Feminist and Civil Activisms

Abstract

AbstractThe present study investigates the landscapes of feminist and civil activist movements in Kazakhstan and how these movements further developed and interacted after 2019. Given Kazakhstan’s authoritarian system of governance, social media plays a crucial role in the development of activist movements as it allows for faster and effective community mobilisation. The paper employs “the logic of connective action” concept as a theoretical basis to explore how social media has impacted the activist movement growth. The study is divided into two analytical parts: inductive and deductive. Inductive analysis is based on qualitative interviews and dedicated to exploring the goals, strategies, and challenges of feminist and activist movements, identifying the main actors, and pinpointing the movements’ interactions. The inductive analysis concludes with the proposition of the hypothesis that local cyberfeminist activism increases women’s involvement in activities dedicated to causes other than feminist one. The deductive analysis attempts to test this hypothesis via a survey developed for the present study. The paper concludes with a discussion section that summarises how feminist activism strengthens other activist movements and how the present case study can be expanded to other Central Asian states.