Nur-Sultan hosts presentation of monograph on Covid-19 and media

The Kazakh capital hosted the presentation on October 1. The book was prepared by the Kazakh Academy of Public Administration and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Kazakhstan. 

“If we try to give a detailed answer, it will be more multidimensional. While the world economic system and globalization continue to foster greater integration and global competition, the technological transformation will continue to foster a community that benefits from it and those who do not join their ranks. This provides truly global access to information and exchange, which equally implies the emergence of winners, as well as losers. During the pandemic, this was evident in all aspects of life, but above all in social media,” says the beginning of the book. 

The study analyzes the content, discourse, and rhetoric of Kazakh media during the COVID-19 pandemic from the perspective of media, culture, and politics in Kazakhstan. The authors delve into how the media responded to the government policies, reasoning about how everyday life was during the quarantine, as well as media content, language, and discourse, disinformation, and conspiracy theories in the media. 

“It changed how we experience life, changed how we interact with each other. Communities around the world had to essentially redefine how they go about the business, how they school the young, how they do public gatherings. Everything has changed in the last one and a half years. And everybody around the planet is affected, maybe not equally, but all feel the impact,” said Christoph Mohr, Friedrich Ebert Foundation Regional Director for Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, during the event on Friday, 

The presentation also featured lively discussions on what are some of the main lessons learned from the pandemic and what are some of the recommendations for the government and the public on how to move forward, as COVID-19 is still with us.