Journalistic Roles and Political Parallelism in a Transitional Society: The Case of Ethiopia

The article is an assessment of journalistic role performance and political parallelism in an African media system, specifically Ethiopia. Transitional countries such as Ethiopia are often associated with high levels of political parallelism in the media landscape. However, the assumption tends to be drawn on the basis of ownership only, while the degree to which political parallelism transpires in journalistic role performance is rarely subject to systematic study. The article takes up the challenge by scrutinizing ten outlets representative of the private and state media sector in Ethiopia (print, radio, television and online). A total of 1200 stories were coded. Ownership appeared as a strong predictor of journalistic role performance. Among six pre-defined roles, four roles were predominant in the state media: interventionist, loyal-facilitator, service and civic roles. The watchdog and entertainment roles, on the other hand, dominated in the private media. A more nuanced analysis of the private media, however, found significant differences in role orientation between different media institutions. The differences are explained by media–political affiliations and changes in the country since 2018. The article argues that systematic analysis of media content can be a sophisticated method to study political parallelism in a country's media system.