Paper abstract:

Media plays a vital role in shaping the perception of its readers. It is through media people get the reflection of what is happening in the society and around the world. This influences how people view men and women in a pervasive and powerful way. In Kazakhstan, the media plays a big role in shaping and sustaining the traditional views about what women and men should do, how they should respectively behave and what they deserve or not. Drawing from framing theory, this study intends to uncover how the mainstream press media in Kazakhstan frame gender stereotypes and how it affects normal readers of the newspapers under study. A qualitative content analysis of twenty articles from each of two newspapers Aiqyn, Karavan and websites Tengrinews, 365 info.kz will be done alongside in-depth interviews with readers to answer the set objectives of this study. The study expects to find as results that women are underrepresented, which falsely implies that men are the cultural standard and women are unimportant or invisible, that men and women are portrayed in stereotypical ways that reflect and sustain socially endorsed views of gender and that depictions of relationships between men and women emphasize traditional roles and normalize violence against women. This study offers the firsthand information on to what extent gender stereotyping exist in the Kazakh media. The study will be an eye-opener to the journalist who might have been unknowingly supporting gender stereotypes.

Keywords: Gender; Stereotypes; Kazakhstan; Fram(e)ing; Media