2017 KYRGYZ PRESİDENTİAL ELECTİONS İN DOMESTİC MEDİA: AN ANALYSİS OF THE CONTENTS OF 24.KG

The Central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan has, for long, been regarded as an ‘island of democracy’. Compared to neighbouring countries, civil society and media are more plural here and has relatively more freedom. It is also the only country from the region to be considered ‘partly free’ by the Freedom House. In October 2017, Kyrgyz Republic witnessed an unprecedented Presidential election for a peaceful transition. Elections can be a good time to not only assess the democratic institutions of any country but also study the status and functions of the media. This paper analyzes the coverage of the 2017 presidential elections of Kyrgyzstan in a domestic news agency (24.kg) to empirically and qualitatively understand the state of the mediascape there. Using critical discourse analysis, I studied the election coverage to understand the larger context of news, and the role media played in the public sphere of the Kyrgyz Republic and concluded that media industry suffered from economic dependence as well as the lack of culture of plural polity. Even private media helped in agenda-setting through ‘dominant reading’ of texts. Paid news was rampant while, at the same time, they self-censored themselves, consciously avoiding critical articles or any investigative pieces, particularly against the government for fear of attracting title suits and persecutions, and more importantly losing sponsors.