Paper abstract:

People are becoming more reliant on what they see, hear, and read in the news to make sense of their lives and the world around them. What people know about Russia's war in Ukraine is determined by how it was reported and presented to them.

Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, several media outlets have created alternative versions of the conflict by highlighting, selecting, emphasizing, interpreting, eliminating certain aspects of truth while ignoring others. The ownership of the media in Kazakhstan affects how the media reports on the war in Ukraine. Using framing theory, this study aims to discover how Kazakhstan's state owned and private owned mainstream mass media frames the war in Ukraine and how it affects readers of the media websites under the study. Employing quantitative and qualitative content analysis, the study examines digital news articles published by two state-owned media outlets (Kazinform and Liter) and two privately owned media outlets (Arbat media and Orda.kz) from the beginning of 2022.

This study expects to come up with results detailing variations in the framing of the war, portrayals of countries, and word choice national settings.