Social media, protest, & outrage communication in Ethiopia: toward fractured publics or pluralistic polity?

ABSTRACT

In 2018, Ethiopia experienced a tectonic political shift following the culmination of years of public outcry against the now defunct ruling party, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). Protest groups, predominantly organized along ethnic identification, have used social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter to disseminate strategies, recruit members, and galvanize support. Anchored on theories of collective identity and moral outrage, this study investigates the role of social media platforms in mobilizing Ethiopians toward political reform during the protest and post-protest periods demarcated by the ascent of Abiy Ahmed as the new Prime Minister of Ethiopia. Data generated from a mixed method approach consisting of an online survey and interviews indicate social media platforms played a crucial role by drawing Ethiopian youth to participate in political discourse, empowering formerly marginalized groups to influence policy, and fostering ingroup cultural/political cohesion. However, evidence indicates participation opportunities created by social media platforms also brought apprehension including the rise of outrage communication as manifested by inflammatory expressions, hate speech, and political extremism. By proposing outrage communication as a viable construct that captures this phenomenon, I argue, in the context of a polity embodying highly heterogeneous and competing collective identities – ethnic or otherwise – such as Ethiopia, social media platforms are likely to increase ingroup political participation but chronically diminish outgroup engagement.

KEYWORDS:

• Collective identity
• Ethiopia
• outrage communication
• protest
• social media

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Note on contributor

Téwodros W. Workneh is Assistant Professor of Global Communication at the School of Communication Studies, Kent State University. His works mostly deal with state-media relations in Ethiopia in the context of issues such as access, regulation, technological proliferation, and social change.

Notes

1 See Barata (2019) for recent youth identity-based organization and movements in Ethiopia.

2 My use of ‘post-protest period’ throughout the article represents the timeframe after Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed assumed office on 2 April 2018. The term does not indicate absence of protests after 2 April 2018. In the context of this study, it is used to signify the end of EPRDF’s domination and emergence of the party’s internal power realignment.

3 My choice of ‘identity’ in lieu of ‘tribalism’ or ‘ethnicity’ is informed by the sense of agency it carries to individuals/groups referenced in the study. I find Mamdani’s (1996, p. 185) notes on the colonial and postcolonial implications of these terms particularly insightful.

4 The study also integrates some Facebook posts into the analysis for illustrative purposes. Note that the use of these artifacts is only complementary and does not represent a major data generation method.

5 Irreecha is the thanksgiving holiday of the Oromo People in Ethiopia. It is celebrated annually with a large public gathering at the sacred grounds of Hora Harsadi (Lake Harsadi) in Bishoftu, Oromia Regional State. In 2019, the major Irreecha festival was held for the first time in Addis Ababa.

6 Although n = 688, the difference across aggregate rows is attributed to non-response by some respondents in specific categories.

7 For example, note how the profile of participants is skewed toward certain demographics in the categories of educational status and nationalistic identification (Table 1). Respondents are predominantly male, hold advanced degrees, and identify with their Ethiopian identity over their ethnic affiliation. This is a key limitation of the survey, the results of which cannot be generalized. The purposive online recruitment technique renders itself for a possibility of some groups to be represented more than others. This is mitigated in the generation of qualitative data where respondents are recruited from diverse political, ethnic and gender backgrounds.

8 Levine’s (1999) work is a good example that illustrates ‘constructivist’ propositions on belonging and identity in Ethiopia.

9 Derived from the name Oromo, Oromummaa, according to Megerssa (2014), can be defined as ‘all those elements that constitute the Oromo personality’ (p. 92).

10 Of or belonging to the Tigrayan ethnolinguistic group.

11 This attempt to define outrage communication is also informed by Anderson’s (2006) conceptualizations on the role of media in fortifying nationalism movements.

12 Note that Ethiopia has recently adopted a hate speech regulatory framework in response to, per the government, rising hate speech occurrences (see Workneh, 2020).