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
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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