'ALLEGEDLY': UNVEILING KAZAKHSTANI MEDIA'S IDEOLOGICAL AND VISUAL SPINS ON PROMINENT NEWS NARRATIVES

Abstract

This study examines the ideological and visual framing strategies used by Kazakhstani news outlets in their coverage of the Saltanat Nukenova case, a high-profile domestic violence incident that captured national and international attention in late 2023. Through the lens of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), the paper analyzes 40 Instagram posts from four news sources (TengriNews, ZTB, Batyr Jamal, and The Village) to explore how linguistic and visual elements are mobilized to construct competing narratives around gender-based violence, justice, and institutional accountability. Drawing on Martin & Rose’s (2007) framework, the analysis focuses on conjunctions, nuclear relations, appraisal, and visual framing to reveal how different outlets align with or resist dominant power structures. The findings show that while state-aligned media (e.g., TengriNews) adopted a procedural, neutral tone that depoliticized the violence, independent outlets (e.g., The Village, Batyr Jamal) employed moral and feminist narratives to foreground systemic failures. ZTB, meanwhile, exhibited commercial tendencies, dramatizing the event without fully engaging with its structural causes. By highlighting these divergent discursive strategies, the paper argues that Kazakhstani media do not simply report events – they participate in ideological negotiations that shape public understanding of gender, power, and justice. This research contributes to ongoing conversations in media discourse studies, sociolinguistics, and feminist CDA by offering an analysis of media bias and resistance in post-Soviet Kazakhstan.