An Investigation of News Framing of 6th General Election of Ethiopia: The Case of Bonga FM 97.4

Abstract

Campaign communication plays a vital role in the practice of democracy; this could be realized through media organizations. Particularly in developing nations such as Ethiopia local radio stations are preferable even if their practice needs an investigation. With this concern, the principal goal of the study was to examine how Bonga FM 97.4 framed and reported its news stories during the 2021 general election of Ethiopia; focusing on source and tone distribution among the parties. The principle of Creswell’s explanatory sequential mixed method approach was used to come up with the rich data presented in the study on the road of cross-sectional design. The study utilized the framing and agenda-setting theories as the bases for the analysis of the news stories. The contents from this approach were analyzed using structured code sheets under six analytical categories which the media pass through to frame the news. Three reporters and two editors were selected purposively to have deep entails on how they framed and have been challenged in reporting campaign news. The finding indicated that despite its valuable role in informing the public with its informative frame, the station dominantly used the issue frame over others, and used the ruling party as a source mostly for its echoed positive tones. The reporters have been challenged differently by internal and external bodies; after all the study forwarded the recommendation as media stations in this setting have to be reformed practically in terms of their independency, work on political reporting routinely, should minimize implicit interference and restriction, and extended study has to be done on this base.