Political Activism and Social Media Responsibility in Ethiopia:- The Case of Facebook & Twitter
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Date
2019-03
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Social media is now all over the world, and become well used alternative media in developing country like Ethiopia where there is no strong political parties and loose freedom of the press. Although the penetration percentages are still low, the power that social media owns in influencing the government and social leaders is becoming increasingly important.
The last two – three years have been in massive rise in use of social media political activism in Ethiopia. When the growth and popularity of social media generated concerns on the political activists, bloggers and influencers made a huge impact towards their followers. The communications mechanism particularly political activist’s call for illicit movement/ action was inflammatory. I believe that social media political activism in the recent digital Ethiopia does not consider the potential risk on the ground and government’s reaction towards it was also radical. Thus the researcher wanted to study other strategic options for responsible use of social media.
Although research on social media has been conducted, for instance, on the use of social media in protest movements and less emphasis has been placed on their responsible use aspects. Thus, to nurture responsible political social media activism, this study aims to better understand the digital political activism trends in Ethiopia and examine the potential relationship between the activist’s posts and followers’ reaction.
In order to achieve the above objectives online questionaries’ been uploaded, two semi -structured interviews were conducted and ‘’Irresponsible “social media posts have been shared, collected and analyzed. Data was analyzed with qualitative content analysis.
Although I believed that our social media activism communication are irresponsible, this study supports the use of social media as a new ways of political participation to get the voices of unheard to be heard. All in all, despite being used for irresponsibly, social media usage was also perceived to contribute to concrete changes in the community and the country at large.
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Journalisme