Fairness and Balance in Election Campaign News Stories During the May 2005 Ethiopian Election. A Study of “Addis Zemen” and the “Reporter” Newspapers
| dc.contributor.advisor | Jones, Nicola (PhD) | |
| dc.contributor.author | Mekuria, Markos | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2018-07-02T08:27:20Z | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2023-11-08T13:37:40Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2018-07-02T08:27:20Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2023-11-08T13:37:40Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2006-06 | |
| dc.description.abstract | In today’s world, the media has become one of the most important sources of information on candidates running for office in an election. Along with that, the media has been thoroughly studied in order to assess how fair and balanced their coverage of candidates and political parties were during the run up to election. In this content analysis study of fairness and balance in election stories, the two newspapers (Addis Zemen and the Reporter) coverage of the May 2005 election in Ethiopia were considerably unfair and imbalanced in the space, prominence and visibility given to candidates and political parties running for seat in the government. Of course, readers have only one in six chance of encountering a story that is both fair and balanced in the two newspapers. This study also found out that stories covering the 2005 Ethiopian election in these newspapers to be much more imbalanced than balanced in both partisan and structural dimensions according to measures applied in the study. Hence, while the proportion of stories in the Addis Zemen newspaper favoring EPRDF candidates were noticeably higher than other contestants, the CUD coalition party and its candidates received much more attention than their counterparts in the Reporter newspaper. Moreover, individual stories in the two sample newspapers are constructed to give a great deal of attention (in terms of space, prominence and visibility) to one candidate and/or political party than other opponents. Accordingly, approximately equal proportions (83% in Addis Zemen and 85% in the Reporter newspaper) of the stories in both newspapers are imbalanced by one up to four component measures. Overall, this study suggests that there is a lot that has to be done to achieve the standards of fairness and balance in both the Addis Zemen and the Reporter newspaper. | en_US |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://etd.aau.edu.et/handle/123456789/5329 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | en_US |
| dc.publisher | Addis Ababa University | en_US |
| dc.subject | Election Campaign News Stories | en_US |
| dc.title | Fairness and Balance in Election Campaign News Stories During the May 2005 Ethiopian Election. A Study of “Addis Zemen” and the “Reporter” Newspapers | en_US |
| dc.type | Thesis | en_US |