The Role of Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation (EBC) in Democratizing the 2014/15 National Election.
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Date
2018-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
It is known that the government of any country is expected to be democratic. Democracy is very
essential for the wellbeing, peace development and stability of citizens. In a democratic set up
the role of media is found to be central. Media plays a great role by providing the necessary
information in a democratic society. With all this idea, this study focused on the role of EBC in
democratizing the 2014/15(2007) national election and also aims at finding out what challenges
this media faced to play this important role expected from it. Qualitative research approach was
employed to conduct the study. In depth interview and discourse analysis data collection method
were used to gather data in order to address the research objective. Social responsibility, the
public sphere, framing, discourse analysis theories were used as theoretical framework to inform
the study. The final finding of the study indicated that EBC is not properly practiced the
democratic roles that are expected to play in the election. For this, internal and external
challenges are identified. The internal challenges are poor level of journalistic professionalism,
and institutional poor performance. The external challenges are the high influence and
interference of government officials. The paper has also tried to see the relationship between
EBC and political parties. The paper identifies the relationship is unfriendly. Therefore EBC
could not properly cover 2015(2007) national election. Even the time of pre- election process the
debate between political parties was not transmitted live. When they were debating the time
allocated to opposing political parties was limited. It was not enough to express their idea, so the
attempt that EBC tried to make the election democratic was very weak.
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Keywords
Role of Ethiopian Broadcasting, Corporation National Election