Media as Contested Terrain of Ethnic Narratives, Power Struggle and Hegemony: Emerging Trends in Ethiopian Media Landscape

Behailu, Atinafu

dc.contributor.author	Behailu, Atinafu
dc.date.accessioned	2022-09-08T07:54:45Z
dc.date.available	2022-09-08T07:54:45Z
dc.date.issued	2022-09
dc.identifier.uri	http://ir.bdu.edu.et/handle/123456789/14097
dc.description.abstract	The study aimed at investigating the emerging trends in the Ethiopian media system by focusing on six purposively selected Television stations namely AMC, TMMA, OBN, ASRAT, OMN, and DW TV. The study posed five main research questions including how journalism is practiced in the selected Ethiopian media while reporting and framing some sensitive socio-political issues in the country, how journalists perceive their roles working in Ethiopian regional and commercial ethnic-based media, what professional ideologies guide the selected media in their journalistic practice, how ethnicity influence the editorial independence of the media/journalists both at the micro and macro level structures, and how the structural condition of the Ethiopian ethnicbased media interplays with their journalistic practice. The study employed explanatory sequential mixed research design through quantitative content analysis, qualitative framing analysis and in-depth interview along with document analysis. The study was informed by analytical model of journalism culture, hierarchy of influences model as well as framing and social identity theories. The finding revealed that ethno-centric perspective nurtures at the center of agenda setting and framing stories, the emergence of ethno-political parallelism and ethnosectarian polarized media interaction as new phenomena in Ethiopian media system. The inquiry also identified interventionism as a dominant institutional role perception, ethical orientations positioned to ethno-political ideologies. The ethno-political logic overrides the editorial independence, and ethnic-based ownership structure nurturing in contemporary Ethiopian media context. By looking at the overall findings, the study concludes that the Ethiopian media system has made ethnicity as an overarching guiding principle in their sensitive regional, interregional, and national issues of news reporting which resulted in a new polarization trend to emerge with media outlets grouping themselves along ethnic lines. The politics of belonging further pervades the institutional role perceptions and ethical ideologies overwhelmingly. In this vein, changing the ethnic branding on the media and other structural modalities is highly recommended until the deeply ingrained ethnic identity-based federation is revised, if not changed. It is suggested that the Ethiopian Media Authority investigate its proclamation and revise the ownership licensing categories, and makes sure government-controlled regional broadcasters are transformed into genuine public service broadcasters. Independent regulatory agencies and a regulatory framework have to be established. To this end, the Authority, in collaboration with independent media councils are recommended to conduct continuous content monitoring and provide feedback to media outlets. Moreover, the ongoing experience of the media channels towards inciting conflicts and escalating ethnic tensions necessitate scholars of the area to facilitate rigorous on-job training to the journalists as to how conflict reporting is conducted per se peace journalism.	en_US
dc.language.iso	en_US	en_US
dc.subject	Journalism and Communication	en_US
dc.title	Media as Contested Terrain of Ethnic Narratives, Power Struggle and Hegemony: Emerging Trends in Ethiopian Media Landscape	en_US
dc.type	Thesis	en_US