The Differential Impact of Traditional and Social Media on Public Confidence: The Case of Kazakhstan

This study explores the changing nature of public confidence and its formation in non-democratic societies. The existing literature suggests that public confidence in democratic societies is understood as citizens' support for democratic values, while in a non-democratic context citizens' confidence is often equated to an assessment of government competence. However, heavy use of social media weakens the link between government competence and public confidence in non-democracies. Using World Values Survey data for Kazakhstan, we find that performance-based confidence no longer holds in a non-democratic state when social media become the main source of information. These findings suggest that social media promote the diffusion of global standards among citizens of authoritarian societies.