Assess Disability Issues Coverage in the Ethiopian Media: The Case of Addis Zemen and Addis Admas Newspapers
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Date
2019-07
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The main aim of this study was to investigate the news coverage of Disability Issues in the
Ethiopian state and private media. Agenda setting and framing were employed as theoretical
frameworks of the study. By taking two years data, the study was conducted on two selected
major state and private media outlets of the nation, namely the Addis Zemen and Addis Admas
Newspaper. Data used for the study was extracted from a total of 834 sample news editions (730
from Addis Zemen and 104 from Addis Admas). The news editions were selected by using
availability sampling techniques. Both content analysis and in-depth interview methods have
also been employed in the study. Content analysis was made on sample news editions to gather
both quantitative and qualitative data with reference to the amount, content and quality of
disability issue coverage by the media studied. In addition, in-depth interviews were made with
Director of FENAPD, editors and reporters who were frequently assigned to cover disability
issues so as to gather qualitative data used to back the results found via the quantitative and
qualitative content analysis method. The study revealed that disability news stories were not
given priority in the daily news agenda of both media outlets studied. Addis Zemen was found to
give more coverage to domestic disability stories than to those foreign ones. In this regard,
almost all of disability news stories of Addis Admas Newspaper were found to be dealing with
domestic ones. Government officials were the dominant source of the news stories of the media
studied. The nature of the disability stories were informative. Most of the disability stories of the
studied media were success stories. The fairness and equality news frame was found to be
dominant being applied in most of the disability stories of the media studied. The Political frame
was the second dominant news frame used. But, a difference was observed between the two
media in making use of the economic frame. This frame was the second dominant frame used in
many of disability stories of the Addis Zemen. Moreover the disability stories give more coverage
for male disability stories than female. In addition visual impairment was the dominant type of
disability story that is given coverage. Based on these findings, some pertinent recommendations
have been made.
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Journalisme