Media Framing of Nations Nationalities and Peoples Day in Ethiopia: The Case of Some Selected Newspapers
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2015-11
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The main objective of this study was to examine media framing of Nations, Nationalities and
Peoples day both in government and private print media outlets from 2010-2014. In order to
conduct this study, three newspapers: namely, the government owned Addis Zemen, and the
privately owned Addis Admass and Reporter newspapers have been purposejitlly selected based
on ownership, access and large circulation oFnewspapers. The study also included newspapers
published in November 24 to December 24 from 2010 to 2014. Accordingly, 135 news articles
were analyzed by using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Quantitative content analysis
and in-depth interview methods were dominantly used. Moreover, in-depth interviews were
conducted with 9 key informants from government and private media houses as well asji'om the
house of federation. This study also dominantly employed framing theOlY as a theoretical
framework. The findings of this study revealed the dominance of development frame over other
media frame types both in Addis Zemen and Reporter Amharic newspapers. However, in the
weekly, Addis Admass, advocacy frame was the most frequently employed frame type for the
coverage of the event. With reference to the coverage of NNPD of Ethiopia, the findings of the
result indicated that Addis Zemen relatively published more news articles than Addis Admass
and Reporter newspapers due to its daily published and government owned newspaper. In
addition, Addis Zemen and Reporter Amharic framed and portrayed the day in a positive way
since Addis Zemen is government controlled media, it has no space to criticize the evel1l
whereas, the weekly Addis Admass portrayed the event of NNPD of Ethiopia in a negative way
because it has relatively beller media freedom than the government owned media. This shows
thotthere are biased views in the newspapers towards the celebration of the event. Moreover, in
the findings of the study, living peacejitlly in tolerance with NNP 's and building a single political
and economic community in the country was found to be the dominant discussed theme both in
Addis Zemen and Reporter (Amharic) newspapers.
Description
Keywords
Nations Nationalities, Peoples Day in Ethiopia