Institute for Peace and Security Studies

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Browsing Institute for Peace and Security Studies by Author "Adem Jemal"

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    An Assessment of Hate Speech, Social Media and Violence in Ethiopia: The Case of Facebook and Youtube
    (Addis Ababa University, 2021-08) Adem Jemal; Fana Gebresenbet (PhD)
    This research aimed at assessing hate speech, social media and violence in the Ethiopia: The case of Facebook and YouTube. The study tries to explore hate speech, social media and violence landscape, mainly categorizing the context of hate speech and violent incident scenarios into two major phenomenon. Firstly, the periods from 2014 up to the reform was considered as a time of social movement or protest, particularly protest by Qeerroos of Oromo, Fannos of Amhara, and Ejjettos of Sidama ethnic groups. In these periods, hate speech rhetoric was against the EPRDF regime-led by TPLF. The second phenomenon, which came after the reform, hate speech context seems to have changed to ethnic and religious aspects. Because in the name of freedom of speech, some politicians started to misuse, and employ social media platform, particularly Facebook and YouTube to express hate speech rhetoric, and disseminate rumor as well as disinformation messages. Moreover, to achieve the thesis‟ objective, the researcher employed explanatory and narrative qualitative research design. Most importantly, data has been collected through interview, Focus group Discussion from politicians, senior officials of Oromia communication Bureau as well as Addis Standard experts and journalists. Based on the data analyzed, the finding of the study indicated that multi-faceted factors which can be categorized as underlying and triggering factors incited violent incident in Ethiopian politics. The underlying factors include historical grievances, the injustice system, institutional ineffectiveness, lack of common understanding and national consensus. Moreover, the rumor message dispersed online, misuse of social media platforms, mainly Facebook and YouTube, some political activist‟s and insurrectionist group‟s irresponsible characteristics of expressing hate speech rhetoric content to others on social media as well as perpetrators‟ political culture of taking little death and exaggerating online has triggered violence in Ethiopian political system. Hence, information gathered from the participant informants indicated that violent incidents were mainly exacerbated due to these underlying, and fueling violence instigative factors.