Blogosphere defeats traditional media in Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan has recently formed a so-called 'Baytuk phenomenon' – a sharp popularization of bloggers who are involved in exposing corrupt and inefficient officials in government circles of the republic. It was named after one of the most well-known bloggers for his revelations, Galym Baytuk, who earned, in the words of Andrey Karpov, "people's love and equally obvious problems on the part of the offended and insulted."

At the same time, unlike Alexei Navalny, such Kazakhstani bloggers completely fit into the formation of the new, interactive and public contacts "state-society" model.

What is the nature of the 'Baytuk phenomenon', is it a specific political technology of the authorities, who are interested in a more active and accessible promotion of their activity for the public, or has a spontaneous but truly modern public initiative for the information age arisen in Kazakhstan? Experts on Kazakh society spoke about this to Vestnik Kavkaza.

For example, the political scientist, the chief editor of the magazine 'World of Eurasia', Eduard Poletaev, stressed that "traditional media in Kazakhstan, according to their degree of influence and credibility, began to lose to bloggers." "The advantage of the blogosphere is in its personalization. Readers have more trust in a particular person who gives voice to these or other initiatives, provides assessments of all sorts of phenomena," he explained.

The representative of the Association of cross-border cooperation in the Republic of Kazakhstan, Marat Shibutov, in his turn, stated that the criticism and the exposure of official-misers is a "personal technology of Galym", in this way the blogger earns money by receiving it from concerned government structures. "It is well known, nobody hides it here," Shibutov said.