10 months have passed since the beginning of war in Ukraine and the information agenda of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan has been related to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine all this time. We have decided to look at how the behaviour of internet users has changed in this period.
Therefore, we have analysed over 25 thousand comments on social media posted under the news of the war by the leading online media of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, as well as searches in Google and news in the media of Kazakhstan (for more details, please see section “How we counted”).
Uzbekistan
The readers actively responded to and commented on the posts about the war from the very beginning of the “special operation,” but later interest has declined. Mobilisation announced in Russia on September 21, 2022 sparked the interest. After that, the activity of the audience has increased – over a half of all comments fall on September and October.
Not a “special operation,” but “war”
Despite the fact that Russian propaganda media voice everywhere that the events in Ukraine are the “special operation,” Uzbekistan-based commentators prefer to call things what they are. Thus, the most popular word in comments was “war,” and “special operation” was mentioned 16 times less often. Commentators also actively mention the presidents of Russia, Ukraine and the United States.
Is war men’s business?
We have analysed all profiles of those commenting on the war news, and almost two thirds of users turned to be men.
It could be related to the fact that men in Uzbekistan read and comment on the news generally more often than women do. Moreover, we have revealed another pattern: Uzbek men comment more often than Uzbek women do, while users with non-Uzbek-Slavic names do not have this pattern.
It is noteworthy that before the mobilisation, comments from both men and women were approximately at the same level. But after the mobilisation was announced, male commentators based in Uzbekistan have become more active and began to express their opinion more often than women.Emoji and trolls
Uzbekistan-based commentators surprised us by the variety of emotions, which they shared under the posts of military actions.
Out of emojis used, there were ordinary “thumbs up” (over 75 per cent of all reactions), “hearts”, “sad face”, “angry face”. However, the most unpredictable thing was that a quarter of all reactions was “grinning face”, and it was used even under the most tragic posts about the victims of the war.
Since the beginning of the mobilisation, the “laughing face” reaction was used more frequently. This oddity can be explained by internet trolls becoming more active on all platforms of Central Asia during the war.
Out of all analysed comments (over 3,200) in the profile Gazeta.uz, we have identified the most active users based on the frequency of appearance of their ID numbers. Thus, the most active user was the author of more than 5 per cent (!) of all comments on the war in Ukraine under media posts. It has no friends or profile photo on the network, but it follows three news outlets in Uzbekistan.
Other users, who show great zeal on social media, add a flag to their avatars instead of a personal photo, post photos of presidents on their “personal” accounts, and have few friends. It shows that they are typical trolls who are specially hired to create a special “atmosphere” in comments.
Kazakhstan
How Kazakhstan media write about war
We have analysed the news on such topics as “Ukraine,” “conflict,” “war” in most popular media of Kazakhstan – and it turned out that not all news agencies write about the war with the same frequency.
It can be explained both by the information agenda of editorial offices, and by the contact of the media with the authorities. For example, inform.kz that published only 10 news items is the government news agency that belongs to “Teleradiocomplex of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan” Joint-Stock Company.
Mobilisation
The flow of Russians entering Kazakhstan has given its output – Kazakhstanis became immediately interested in what the mobilisation was. Attention given to this term has even exceeded the interest to the war itself that caused the mobilisation.
It is noteworthy and logical that regions of Kazakhstan that share the border with Russia showed more interest in the news about “Mobilisation” compared to southern regions that do not share the border with Russia.
The war, not “special operation”
Despite the strong influence of the Russian propaganda via television and other media outlets, the Kazakhstan-based internet users often call the events in Ukraine the war, not the special operation. If we look at the Google searches, we will see that users in all regions of Kazakhstan use the word “war” more often. However, the Russian propaganda should not be underestimated – it is still strong in border regions. Thus, out of five regions where the word “special operation” is used most frequently, four are the regions that share border with Russia: Kostanai, East Kazakhstan, Aktobe, and Pavlodar.
How the society divided
To understand the attitude of residents of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan towards the war, we have analysed over a thousand of comments (in both republics) in the first three months of the war. Some commentators stand for war and justify Russia’s military actions, some are against the current situation, support Ukraine and peace in general, and others have a neutral attitude to the situation.
According to our calculations, nearly one third of commentators based in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan support Russia.
The rest of comments either support Ukraine, or neutral. Meanwhile, comments in support of the war get more likes and popularity, respectively.
How we counted
We selected two leading media outlets in Uzbekistan (kun.uz, gazeta.uz) and three popular media outlets in Kazakhstan (ztb_kz, holanews, tengrinews) to see the attitude of users towards the war. The criteria of selection of news platforms were: independence (no links to the government), provision of objective information about the war in Ukraine, level of coverage in the media space. We gathered 25,500 comments on Instagram, Facebook, Telegram, YouTube and Twitter posted by users under posts and publications on the war from February to October this year, held qualitative and quantitative analysis of all comments gathered. We took into account comments under public posts (some publications about the war were closed for discussion).
The level of interest of Kazakhstanis to such terms as “mobilisation,” “war,” “special operation” was calculated by means of algorithms used by the Google search engine: ratio of the number of searches of a certain word to the total number of searches in the region for a definite period, with the maximum value 100. We analysed searches of keywords and expressions: “mobilisation,” “war,” “special operation,” “special operation in Ukraine,” “war in Ukraine 2022,” “special operation news,” “war in Ukraine today,” “special operation in Ukraine today,” “war in Ukraine today,” “Russia news,” “Ukraine news,” “Ukraine war,” “world news,” “war Ukraine,” “latest news.”
Mentor: Aizada Toma
Main photo: MAXSHOT/Depositphotos.com