A Study on Framing of Pre- election News Stories in the 2015 Ethiopian General Elections: The Case of Addis Zemen, Reporter, EBC and FBC.
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Date
2015-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
These days, media plays a decisive role in all aspects of political, economic and social affairs of
a country being the main source of information. It turns into an actor during political parties
running for general elections in a given country. Along with that, the media play either an
adverse or significant role in such a critical time of national elections by framing the news and
programs in the way that to gratify the abiding interest of owners adherent to one side.
This study was conducted mainly to investigate the framing of pre - election news stories during
the 2015 Ethiopian general elections by the country's government owned and privately owned
media. The study employed qualitative content analysis approaches. To conduct the study, two
newspapers namely Addis Zemen and Amharic Reporter and two broadcasters namely EBC and
FBC (television and radio respectively) with a relatively larger circulation and high coverage of
domestic politics were under the study. Two major contending opposition parties, the Blue party
and Medrek were interviewed to help the researcher see how the framing of pre - election news
stories was done. The study included news stories and editorial pieces published and broad casted
within the period of March 24 to May 21 , 2015.
Results of the study revealed that the government owned media Addis Zemen and EBC were
under the pressure of the government and portrayed the ruling party (EPRDF) positively whereas
the privately owned media Amharic Reporter and FBC were relatively under a lesser pressure and portraying the political parties relatively neutrally in framing of the pre - election news
stories during the fifth round Ethiopian general elections. Morality frame and conflict frame were
the predominant frames employed by the selected media during the preelection period. Finally,
recommendations are given based on the findings.
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Keywords
Ethiopian general elections