Established as a firm presence in the information space in Kazakstan, the new media is increasingly embracing Western-style entertainment and social networking and even Western media content. Though Kazakhstan still lags behind many countries in terms of the number of internet users per capita, the arrival of smart phones, twitting, and file and photo sharing over the mobile-phone networks has helped to change the media landscape, making new media content accessible even in small cities and towns. These changes have intensified the discourse within the country about the future of the media culture: will Kazakhstan’s media be able to compete with the forces of globalization?

BACKGROUND: With the rise of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) literacy, the younger generation of students and professionals in Kazakhstan has begun actively using ICT not only for uncritical adaptation of Western-style entertainment, social networks and Western media content, but also for producing their own cultural and information content using various new media platforms. Many young professionals begin their day by cruising through several national and local newspapers and news portals – very much like their Western colleagues: today almost all newspapers and magazines in Kazakhstan have their own quite sophisticated websites in Kazakh, Russian and occasionally in English. According to the data from Kazakh sources, local netizens have access to more than 2,200 internet newspapers, though only a quarter of these are updated regularly.

This is in sharp contrast to the Iron Curtain era or to the situation just a few years ago. Kazakhstan was a latecomer to the information revolution. As recently as the 1990s, only a very few privileged organizations had access to the Internet and to an electronic mailing system covering less than one percent of the population. Even these privileged users had no access to broadband Internet connection and waited for hours to get a dial-up connection or to download important files. Large-scale investments and international competition in the early 2000s helped to radically change the ICT environment. The development of a modern communication infrastructure during the last decade helped facilitate access to the Internet: according to the State Agency for Information and Communication, about 30 percent of the country’s population had access to the Internet (if Internet-capable mobile phones are included) by the end of 2009, up from 14 percent at the end of 2008. During the last decade, the national telecommunication companies finally introduced high speed Internet, charging about 5,000 Tenge (about US$35) per month, though it is still quite expensive for most of the population. Close proximity to the major ICT manufacturing centers – South Korea and China – has helped to fill the market with the latest gadgets, smart phones and other products. By 2008-2009, most schools and universities across the country had established their own computer centers equipped with the latest generation of computers and good-quality access to the Internet.

“Our usage of the Internet and new media goes well beyond entertainment and news,” explains Dilara Istybayeva, an expert on new media and PhD candidate at the Kazakh National University. “Citizens in our country use the new media for social networking and in everyday life, including the usage of e-governance services.” Indeed, the older generation has discovered the Internet to build up social networks with their classmates and colleagues through the most popular Russian-based website, Odnoklassniki (http://www.odnoklassniki.ru), while the younger generation prefers to hang around Moi mir (http://my.mail.ru) and VKontakte (http://vkontakte.ru). Probably all Kazakh netizens know or use in one way or another Facebook, MySpace and YouTube and their Kazakh cousins - http://kaztube.kz/, http://kiwi.kz and http://podkazt.kz. In fact, YouTube has become one of the most popular platforms for the creation of social networks of Kazakh music fans – practically all of the latest Kazakh music hits can be found there. For example, when the infamous movie about Borat was not yet accessible to the general public in Kazakhstan, it could be found on YouTube. The blogo-craze has also arrived in Kazakhstan, with thousands of people creating their own platforms, among which Tsentr Tiazhesti (http://www.ct.kz/) and Yvision (http://yvision.kz/) have become the most popular. This website hosts hundreds of blogo-communities, which discuss virtually everything from buying second-hand cars and makeup lessons to fitness classes, dating tips and poetry translation experiments in the Kazakh or Russian languages.

The netizens also have an opportunity to use ICT in accessing various public services provided by the local and national government agencies over the Internet, from getting legal and administrative information to paying various fees, taxes and bills. Taking the concept of e-governance quite seriously, the government of Kazakhstan has mandated every government agency to establish its presence on the global web. Moreover, Kazakhstan’s government even obliged high-ranking government officials to maintain their own blogs and to host regular blogo-conferences. In fact, the country was ranked 81st out of 182 countries in the UN e-government readiness index in 2008.

IMPLICATIONS: The development of new media in Kazakhstan has been particularly robust during the last six or seven years, and despite the global financial crisis continues quite strongly. The development of this sector has a far-reaching impact that affects many aspects of life, including the cultural, social and political development of the country. First, ITC has had the greatest impact on the field of education by enabling citizens to use the Internet in accessing various services and by helping young professionals and school- and university-level students to learn about international standards in governance, public management and civil services. Second, the opening of the national information space to the forces of globalization has exposed Kazakhstan’s media outlets to fierce competition for the hearts and minds of the country’s netizens. This competition has helped to bring international standards and creativity to various media outlets, so that they are not content to simply copy Western-style cultural content, but make creative use of local and national cultural content to become more appealing to the public. Though the readership of some media outlets has been shrinking steadily, yet other media outlets have found innovative ways to attract the public.

In addition, the Internet has provided an inexpensive platform for launching new niche media outlets and networks, discussing everything from crisis survival strategies to the fate of Kazakh poetry and literature and preserving the cultural heritage of the various ethnic groups living in the country. Third, ICT promotes the development of civil society as hundreds and even thousands of active netizens enthusiastically embrace the new platform in building better governance for their own country, actively participating in public debates on local and national issues, demanding delivery of higher quality public services from government officials and actively discussing various policy programs.

CONCLUSIONS: International experience suggests that globalization is a complex process which, by and large, leads to greater integration of countries and societies into a globalized world. Global competition puts a huge pressure on the local and national media, but at the same time encourages old and new media to use information and communication technologies in innovative ways for the benefit of all citizens. If properly developed and managed, the new media can positively contribute to the economic and social competitiveness of developing countries, but this also requires the development of proactive policies at different levels. The government should use all means to make access to the Internet, mobile phones and other communication services affordable and accessible for more citizens by encouraging competition among communication providers. It should also invest in building and developing contemporary ICT infrastructure, improving access to the new media technologies and media services including improving e-governance in the country. The government should also refrain from isolating its information space from the forces of globalization by limiting its citizens’ access to the global web, as seen in some other Central Asian republics.

AUTHORS’ BIO: Rafis Abazov, PhD, teaches at the Harriman Institute/SIPA at Columbia University (New York). He is author of Historical Dictionary of Kyrgyzstan (2004), The Culture and Customs of the Central Asian Republics (2007) and the Palgrave Concise Historical Atlas of Central Asia (2008). In 2009 he contributed to the UNDP and UNFEM reports on migration in Central Asia and the CIS.