Ethiopian Print Media Coverage of the Arab uprisings: The case of Addis Zemen, Fetehe, and Reporter

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Date

2013-06

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Addis Ababa University

Abstract

The principal aim of this study was to investigate how the Arab uprising was covered by the selected newspapers. With the aim of examining the coverage, framing theory and political economy of the mass media were employed as the theoretical frameworks of the study. By taking a three month data, the study was conducted on three newspapers namely, Addis Zemen, the Amharic Reporter and Fetehe. Quantitative content analysis, Qualitative content (textual analysis) analysis and in-depth interview were the techniques used. While the quantitative content analysis and the qualitative content analysis were applied to identify the frames and provide supporting excerpts for the frames respectively, in-depth interview was employed to back the results found from the two methods. The study revealed that the conflict frame was predominantly used by the papers, Addis Zemen and Amharic Reporter. The next frame was the contingency frame which stands as the dominant frame of Fetehe. The use of the contingency frame varied between the private and government owned papers. While the two private papers claimed that there were causes that could have made Arab like uprising possible in Ethiopia, Addis Zemen argued that Ethiopia is free from the problems of the Arab uprising. Following contingency frame, the turn was for human interest frame where the newspapers largely entertained the personal behaviour of Muammar Gaddafi. In their Prognostic frame, Addis Zemen and Fetehe expressed pessimistic and optimistic view about ii the consequences of the Arab uprising respectively while Amharic Reporter presented both. Attribution of responsibility was found in Fetehe and Amharic Reporter but not in Addis Zemen. Finally, the least used frame happened to be diagnostic frame where differences and similarities were observed among the papers in conceptualizing the causes of the Arab uprising. What is more, it was found out that the coverage of Addis Zemen and Fetehe was tilted towards owner interest than the real depiction of the issue. Amharic Reporter tried to give a fair coverage. Based on the finding, some recommendations were forwarded to mitigate the limitations.

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Keywords

Print media coverage of the Arab uprisings

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