Public Opinion Monitoring Technologies: How the State Uses Data to Make Political Decisions

Aizhan Smailova¹Assiya Kuzembayeva^1*Rysbek Utkelbay¹Fatima Kukeyeva²Kuralay Baizakova²

• ¹School of Law and Public Policy, Narxoz University, Almaty, Kazakhstan
• ²Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, Almaty, Kazakhstan

This study investigates how the government of Kazakhstan utilizes techniques such as national surveys and real-time sentiment analysis through social media monitoring to better understand public opinion and use it in political decision-making. The study employs a mixed-methods approach and analyzes 2020–2024 data using descriptive statistics and Pearson correlation to examine the link between technology adoption and policy responsiveness. For this 72 policy decisions and 27 expert survey responses were analyzed to examine how technology adoption affects policy responsiveness. The analysis covered 72 policy episodes having average participation rate of 42% among relevant officials. Results show that classic polls still are institutionally the most powerful, but other technologies, such as social media analytics and SMS polling, are being used more and more often, for quick executive level feedback. This study finds a strong positive relationship between the use of sentiment analysis and reduction in policy lag time, which highlights that digital technologies help in making the state more responsive. The study adds to the body of knowledge of data-informed governance by starting to empirically connect the use of technology with when and the political should act. The study emphasizes the double-edged nature of these devices as both tools of administrative innovation and political domination. Findings suggest that digital opinion tools improve policy responsiveness but raise concerns about transparency and democratic accountability in hybrid regimes.