Browsing by Author "Tadesse Megersa"

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    Typology and Mechanisms of Ethnic-based Online Hate Speech in Ethiopia: A Grounded Theory Approach
    (Addis Ababa University, 2024-06) Tadesse Megersa; Abebaw Minaye (PhD)
    Using language that devalues others is known to be the royal road to enemy-making, identity based conflict, and genocide. Parallel to the explosive growth of social media users in Ethiopia, ethnic-based hate speech has increased to the point where it is ripping Ethiopian society apart and threatening the values of democracy, human dignity, and peaceful coexistence. The present grounded theory-inspired study aims to explore the types of ethnic-based hate speech, how it occurs, and how social media users react to hate speech posts on social media. In order to address these objectives, relevant social media contents are collected from a few purposefully selected social media accounts or pages, from Facebook, YouTube news Channels, and Twitter platforms. Using a broader working definition and a checklist, hate speech data was manually collected, while comments given to a few of the hate speech posts were automatically extracted using a web link called exportcomment.com. In addition to social media content, six interviews were also conducted to support the findings obtained from the analysis of social media content. The collected data are stored in dataset, one by one until data saturation is reached. After immersion into the dataset, the analysis is guided by inductive coding as well as relevant grounded theory principles such as constant comparative analysis. Through inductive coding, hence, codes, concepts, and categories are generated and presented with thick descriptions. The finding shows four types of hate speech (dehumanization, enemification, devaluation, and attacking and repelling), three core categories of mechanisms (earned reputation, trolling and poaching, and user-fallibility), and five roles of users in reacting to hate speech posts (trolling, pacemaking, peacemaking, guarding, and informing). In addition, the findings show four interrelated contexts in which the hate speeches were framed: competition and disagreement over history and resources, the conflict in the Northern part of Ethiopia, lack of diversity tolerance, and failure of the government to uphold law and order. The study discusses the findings and provides recommendations deemed necessary to counteract hate speech. Keywords: Hate speech, dehumanization, enemification, devaluation, trolling, pacemaking, poaching, earned reputation