Journal of Intercultural Communication | 2026
Authors: Khamzina Z.; Buribayev Y.
DOI: 10.36923/jicc.v26i1.1377
Journal: Journal of Intercultural Communication
Year: 2026
Publisher: Immigrant Institutet
Document Type: Article
Open Access: All Open Access; Gold Open Access
Cited by: 0
Recent public debates in Kazakhstan increasingly frame school bullying as a growing problem. This study examines how this perception of increase is produced and interpreted within a bilingual Kazakh–Russian communicative context. Drawing on a qualitative corpus collected in 2025—comprising 18 focus group discussions, 100 semi-structured expert interviews, and 154 pre-discussion questionnaires—the study traces communicative repertoires and visibility regimes rather than measuring behavioral incidence. The findings indicate that the perceived rise in bullying reflects shifts in visibility (observability), including institutional detection practices, public circulation through digital media, and changing normative thresholds. Three recurring patterns support this interpretation: (1) the routinization of anti-bullying work through values education modules and scheduled prevention activities; (2) intergenerational narratives that lower tolerance for coercive practices; and (3) mediatization that accelerates digital circulation and moral evaluation. The article introduces a visibility framework that analytically separates behavioral incidence from the processes that render episodes detectable, publicly circulating, and institutionally classifiable. This distinction clarifies how administrative counts may increase without a behavioral surge. The study contributes to intercultural communication by demonstrating how the category “bullying” is negotiated across linguistic repertoires and institutional arenas. Policy implications include event-level monitoring that records detection channels and digital traces, coordinated offline and online prevention strategies, and structured engagement with parents as a key detection pathway. © 2026 by author(s).
Bullying; Cyberbullying; Intercultural Communication; Mediatization; Normative Change; Qualitative Research; Visibility