Aigul Zabirova,
Doctor of Sociology, Professor,
Chief Research Fellow at the
KazISS under the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan
After mapping out the main “islands” of Kazakhstan’s media archipelago in the previous article from national TV channels to bloggers and radio stations, the next questions arise: “How are media preferences distributed across social groups? Who chooses television, and who prefers Telegram channels? Are there any media that bring generations together, and are there any which divide them?” In this article, we examine the findings of KazISS’s spring survey through the lens of gender, age, education, income, and place of residence.
Every day, we sit down at an “information table.” For some, this is a hot dinner in front of the television; for others, it is fragmented news updates in messengers while some prefer morning coffee accompanied by online media. However, what determines this choice? Is it age, environment, education, or an inherited rhythm of life? In other words, if a young man starts his morning with Tengri News, scrolls through Telegram during the day, and ends the evening with Netflix, while his father does vice versa, what explains this difference? In this article, we will “zoom in” to observe who lives on each “island” of media consumption and why. Where do we find more young people? Where do we find the older generation? Who are the urban audiences and who are the rural ones? Who prefers Telegram, who chooses Kazakhstani television, and who turns to BBC? The answers to these questions hold an important key to understanding not only how society perceives news, but also why the same fact may resonate differently with different groups of people. As the well-known French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has shown, even the most ordinary practices of consumption, whether food or media, reflect deep social distinctions, serving as expressions of enduring tastes and habits (habitus).
Therefore, a socio-demographic analysis of empirical data has revealed a number of noteworthy features in the media consumption of Kazakhstanis:
1. Gender lens of the media landscape. Men and women in Kazakhstan show similar, yet not identical, media profiles. Women tend to place greater trust in national television channels (63.7% compared to 54% of men) and in print media (10.2% versus 8.1%). Men, on the other hand, are more likely to turn to bloggers and opinion leaders (9.6% compared to 7.9%), as well as to foreign media outlets (4.7% versus 2%). One possible explanation is that women continue to follow more traditional media habits, particularly the older generation, which prefers established and “trusted” formats. Men, by contrast, appear more inclined to experiment and to search for information independently.
2. Generational divides and points of convergence. In this survey, age emerged as one of the strongest factors of stratification. The data show that television grows in importance with age, from 54.3% among the 30–45 group to 68.6% among those over 60. Social media, by contrast, lose trust sharply across generations: 44.9% among the youngest cohort versus just 20.8% among the oldest. Online news outlets display a similarly youthful profile: 38.3% of respondents aged 18-29 prefer them, while only 20.7% of the respondents in the 60+ group select this source of news. The fact that the print media (7.8% of 18–29-year-olds compared to 12.8% of the respondents over 60) becomes more meaningful with age, suggests the persistence of information habits formed before the digital era. Generational differences are least pronounced when it comes to national television channels. Following Bourdieu, we can say that the choice of one form of consumption over another is shaped not only by opportunities, but also by the deeply ingrained patterns of perception, taste, and orientation in the world embodied within individuals.
3. City and village: does a digital divide exist? In urban areas, the media landscape is more diverse and digitalized. For city residents, in general, social networks and messengers rank first, with significantly higher consumption of online media (33.6% versus 25% in rural areas) and social networks (37.2% of urban respondents versus 30.6% of rural ones). In villages, by contrast, television (62.7%) and print press (10.6%) continue to dominate. Another gap lies in the greater trust that city dwellers place in bloggers (10.1%) compared to rural dwellers (only 4%). Most likely, rural-urban differences are greater here than the issue of access to infrastructure; this is a manifestation of deeper differences in the scope of cultural capital. Based on the logic proposed by Pierre Bourdieu, city dwellers socialize in a more complex environment and therefore have the skills to interpret a wide variety of sources. Rural residents’ greater reliance on TV reflects a continuation of media practices that correspond to their life experiences.
In this sense, the media landscape reproduces the social structure of the society where the cities tend toward eclectic news consumption, while villages remain carriers of more institutionalized preferences. This pattern requires special attention considering not only the issue of access, but also the social meanings associated with media choice.
4. Educational stratification. The data show that education most clearly reproduces the overall hierarchy of trust in news sources, while at the same time producing quite predictable pattern of preferences. National television channels remain the leaders of media trust across all educational groups, but their dominance clearly declines as education rises, from 63.8% among respondents with incomplete secondary education to 37.2% among those holding a graduate degree. As far as individuals accumulate cultural capital, they increasingly turn to sources of information that offer reflection, analysis, and alternative perspectives. Media practices related to online news; for example, require more cognitive effort from the readers: they involve not just reading, but also comparing and navigating across platforms. Trust in online media also correlates with educational attainment: from 23.1% among people with incomplete secondary education to 46.5% among respondents with graduate degrees. Such users are often able to “read between the lines” and distinguish information from propaganda. What matters most here is that the educated are searching less for the news itself, and more for its interpretation. This represents an important shift.
Social networks and messengers, meanwhile, reflect the trajectory of collective experience. They are most popular among groups with secondary education (36.2%), though they also attract a considerable share of university graduates. Indeed, the social media today function as a hybrid media diet combining the official and the unofficial, the rational and the emotional.
Perhaps, the most interesting trend concerns bloggers. Trust in bloggers increases with education level (from 8.1% among respondents with incomplete schooling to 20.9% among those with graduate degrees) which challenges the stereotype that educated audiences consume media superficially. It appears that the blogosphere in Kazakhstan is turning into a zone of expertise, a media style where specialists engage with specialists, and where analysis, education, and politics intersect. The audience for foreign media, in turn, is strikingly diverse, ranging from vocational school graduates to holders of top universities’ diplomas.
To conclude this detailed look at education, and drawing on Bourdieu’s ideas, we might say that while choosing media we demonstrate the social layer we belong to, the symbols we value, and the cultural code we carry within us.
5. Media and social strata. In short, Republican TV channels are the most popular source of news among all social groups, but especially among people with limited financial means. Meanwhile, the popularity of social media and online media grows in line with income. Bloggers and opinion leaders are closer to the middle class, while radio and print media consumers are more common among less affluent segments of the population. When it comes to foreign TV channels, TV preferences vary depending on socioeconomic status. Thus, once again we see that media do not merely reflect social reality, but actively reproduce it, defining which topics gain prominence and which are pushed to the margins.
In the end, what we see is a multilayered yet fairly predictable media landscape. Media preferences in Kazakhstan follow a clear pattern of social stratification. The younger, more educated, and more “urban” a person is, the more likely they are to get information from social networks, online media, and blogs. The older the audience, the more stable their trust in television, print press, and radio. Viewed through the lens of Pierre Bourdieu, media consumption in Kazakhstan is not just a matter of choice, it is a reflection of deeply rooted life experience, of habitus. Some remain anchored on the familiar “islands” of television channels, while others have long set sail into the digital sea, placing their trust in Telegram. For some, online media are a safe harbor; for others, they are a search for new routes. Kazakhstan’s media archipelago is multilayered: each person has their own island, their own navigation. However, the course we choose to follow speaks volumes about WHO WE ARE, where we come from, and WHERE WE ARE headed.
