The Political Reform and the Amharic Biweekly Reporter: The Editorial Contents of the Reporter Newspaper in Ethiopia from 2017 to 2019

Abstract

This research examines the agenda and frames used by the Reporter newspaper editorial coverage of issues and actors before and after the reform in Ethiopia. The study applies quantitative content analysis method and examined 99 (Period 1 = 57 and Period 2 = 42) editorials in all periods. The source of data and the period of data collection were purposely selected. The results indicated that societal issue, government and party issues were frequent in both periods. Professional journalist was the only Author in both periods. More government criticism and more reforms were mentioned before the reform. Compared with editorials published before and after the reform, noticeable changes were observed in government critique, attribution of responsibility frames, human interest frames and economic issue frames. However, content selection, sources of information, mentioned reforms, conflict relationship frames and ideological frames didn’t have relationship with date of publication. Finally, the Reporter editorials coverage did change significantly in many respects, although it is difficult to determine the causes of the changes-economic factors, reduced political control, social changes or globalization forces.