Paper abstract:

This study discusses the ways the nuclear power plant construction was framed in the Kazakhstan news media. The aim of the study is to reveal media frames and their features in news articles about the construction of nuclear power plants in the Kazakhstan news media. The research responds to the question what media frames characterize news publications about the construction of nuclear power plants in the Kazakhstan news media. The media frames typology is based on the set proposed by W. Gamson and A. Modigliani on the topic of nuclear power. The set represents two groups of media frames: pro-nuclear and anti-nuclear. The empirical base consists of 100 articles in the Kazakh and Russian languages on the topic of the nuclear power plant construction in 10 leading local news media (KazInform, TengriNews, Khabar, Zakon.kz, BaigeNews, Azattyk, KazTAG, ORDA, The Village Kazakhstan, Vlast) published between 2019 to 2022. The dominant, conflicting, and ambivalent frames for each discursive and linguistic group of articles were fixed. The results demonstrate consistency of frames distinction and the discursive orientation of media. Accordingly, pro-nuclear frames ("progress", "energy independence", "devil's bargain") are characteristic of state media articles, while anti-nuclear frames ("runaway", "soft paths", "public accountability") are typical of opposition news media articles. On a more general level, the same distribution is maintained in both groups of publications in Russian and Kazakh, as a rule, the publication language is not a factor of frame shift, but is an additional tool of the described information occasion alternative interpretation. The research key methodological problem is the non-consistency of the frame, i.e. presentation of inconsistent information within the unified groups of media frames. Since this methodological aspect of frame analysis has not been fully developed, in this study it is examined in detail on the example of Kazakhstan nuclear power plant construction coverage in local news media.