| dc.description.abstract | The Ethiopian society is dominantly religious. The constitution of the country advocates for a strictly secular approach with a sharp separation of state and religion. This study is mainly intended to examine the transformation of religious reporting (i.e. mediatization of religion) across time and space in the Ethiopian media. The essence and practice of secularization as a guiding principle of journalism in the Ethiopian mainstream media are also assessed. To this end, qualitative and quantitative methods are used. The qualitative aspect involves in-depth interviews of 6 experienced journalists and 5 key individuals with considerable media (journalistic) experience from the different Ethiopian religions. The quantitative aspect is done by considering the religious content of three Ethiopian newspapers (Addis Zemen, Reporter and Addis Admass) in 1988/92, 1998 and 2008 (years in Ethiopian calendar). The findings revealed that religion is a neglected topic in the Ethiopian mainstream media. State media often report religion during religious holidays; at other times, it is reported together with such topics as peace, security, development, tourism and national integration. The practice of not considering religion as an independent subject matter is found to emanate partly from a misconception of the principle of secularism and partly from a lack of knowledge and understanding of the issue being reported. As such, the journalists were found to be non-religious in approach, rather than being secular. Private media are also found to give sporadic coverage of religion, and their reports focus mainly on the investigation of corruption in business activities of religious institutions. This seems to be because of lack of interest, commitment and understanding of religion by journalists and because of threats from religious institutions which seem to find it hard to take journalistic criticism and investigations positively.
The quantitative aspect revealed that across the selected years, the three newspapers altogether presented 362 articles on religion, of which 262 appeared in the state newspaper, Addis Zemen. Religion is found to increase in its visibility as a topic in terms of number of articles as opposed to having smaller size allotted to it. It is also found that the dominant proportion of articles on religion is presented in the form of news and that the tendency of such articles appearing in social, cultural and political columns is increasing. All Ethiopian religious traditions are found to be underrepresented compared to the proportion of their respective population. Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahdo Church (EOTC) and Islam are, however, found to be more visible and significant compared to their Protestant and Catholic counterparts. The significance aspect of the quantitative study also revealed that double the number of religious articles deal with religion as secondary issue (N=241) showing that religion is considered significant by only half of the religious stories (N=121). It is also found that most of the main articles are reported in such mediatized forms as news and columns. Articles on religion that are not related to one of the Ethiopian religious traditions (unclassified articles) are mostly presented as additional topics, and hence much of them are considered to be less significant. In sum, the findings reveal that media representation of religion seems to be at a low level in Ethiopia. | nb_NO |
