Negotiating traditional and Western values in social media: a critical discourse analysis of Kazakhstani influencers' content

Abstract

This study examines how Kazakhstani social media influencers negotiate tensions between traditional Kazakh norms and Western liberal value repertoires in their digital content. It asks: (1) what discursive strategies influencers use to navigate competing value systems; (2) in which domains (gender roles, sexuality, consumption, and religiosity) value conflict is most visible; and (3) how audiences respond to and participate in these negotiations. The study employs critical discourse analysis to examine Instagram and TikTok content from 50 influencers, analyzing 500 posts and 3,000 user comments published between 2023 and 2024. Inductive thematic coding identifies four recurring discursive strategies: selective Westernization discourse, neotraditionalist discourse, cosmopolitan-liberal discourse, and ambivalent discourse. Findings show that influencers construct hybrid axiological configurations through semantic reframing, selective appropriation, temporal compartmentalization, and contextual maneuvering. Rather than producing a coherent synthesis of tradition and modernity, these practices frequently generate what the article conceptualizes as strategic incoherence-the simultaneous maintenance of partially incompatible value positions. In this article, Western liberal values refers to a bundled repertoire typically encountered on platforms, including neoliberal individualism, consumerist self-fashioning, gender egalitarianism, sexual liberalism, and secularism. Across all strategies, gender emerges as the primary point of contention. Female influencers operate at the intersection of Soviet state-feminism legacies, post-Soviet nationalizing projects, Islamic revivalism, and liberal feminist narratives, producing postfeminist articulations that acknowledge inequality while individualizing solutions. Audience comments cluster into three positions-conservative-oppositional (defending tradition), liberal-supportive (prioritizing autonomy), and conciliatory (seeking synthesis)-reflecting broader cleavages linked to generation, education, and urbanization. Interpreting neotraditionalist content through political-economy and postcolonial lenses, the study argues that cultural heritage is often commodified as brand capital (Ethnicity, Inc.) within constraints of platform capitalism, platform governance, algorithmic visibility, and global cultural hierarchies. Overall, the article advances scholarship on value transformation in under-studied post-Soviet Central Asian contexts by linking local discursive agency to the structuring power of digital platforms.