Solomon Kebede Gebremeskel

• Gebremeskel, Solomon Kebede & Hoxha, Abit (2024). Protesting for change: Ethiopia's diasporic media and the fight for democracy. In Tshuma, Lungile; Matsilele, Trust; Mpofu, Shepherd & Msimanga, Mbongeni (Ed.), Media, social movements, and protest cultures in Africa : Hashtags, humor, and slogans. Lexington Books. ISSN 9781666970142. p. 183–201. Full text in Research Archive
• Gebremeskel, Solomon Kebede & Tveiten, Oddgeir (2023). Ethnicity as journalism paradigm: Polarization and political parallelism of Ethiopian news in transition. Online Journal of Communication and Media Technologies. 13(3). doi: 10.30935/ojcmt/13333. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  In the wake of the 2018 liberalization of journalistic freedoms in Ethiopia, new waves of political unrest and a re-tightened grip on the media have emerged. A key feature in this context is the increasing reference to ethnic contrasts reflecting regional differences. While Ethiopia is a unique country in the African context in the sense of never having been colonized (with the exception of a brief period of Italian occupation), features of the contemporary media situation are also of general validity in understanding political realities in other African countries. This paper explores the concept of ‘journalism paradigms’ in that regard, with the follow-up question of how an understanding of journalism paradigms founded on ethnic boundaries might also contribute toward a more distinctly ‘African’ journalism research framework.

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• Gebremeskel, Solomon Kebede (2025). Between the Global North and the Global South: Journalists’ Role Perception in the Ethiopian Diaspora Evolving Hybrid Media Practices. Universitetet i Agder. ISSN 9788284272764. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Recent studies on the state of global democracy paint a negative picture of the trends in citizens’ freedom. An increasing number of countries exhibit trends of stagnation and regression. The primary victim of decline in democracy is the freedom of expression and media. Any impediment to the independence of the media affects citizens’ access to reliable information and their active engagement in political discourse to make informed choices. As part of one of the institutions that fall prey to government surveillance and pressure from the powerful, journalists face the choice of either working in line with the interests of regimes and remaining unaffected or performing their duties and living with the consequences. The consequences include harassment, outright closure of media houses, detention, and, in some cases, death. Media practitioners who manage to escape these adversities in their homeland find safe shelters and eventually resume their work from their new destinations. Such journalists in exile provide an alternative source of information to audiences in their homeland. Journalists in exile are not the only transnational sources of information for audiences in their country of origin in a repressive state. There are journalists working for international public broadcasters (IPBs) who produce news in local languages to reach audiences back home. These two groups of journalists are disparate in terms of their organisation, mission, and background. Nevertheless, they have certain shared features in terms of the place of work, which is the Global North in most cases, use of local languages, and the target audiences, who are fellow citizens back home – commonalities that join the two strands of journalism in the diaspora. The 2024 world press freedom index released by Reporters without Borders (RSF) ranks Ethiopia at 141 out of 180 countries – a steep decline from its 99th position in 2020. The official statistics indicate the flight of 54 journalists between 2020 and 2024. However, many believe that this number may have been much higher had there been a system of tracking those running away using informal routes. This influx of journalists has grown the existing community of exiled journalists sheltered in refugee camps and in refugee-receiving Western nations where they operate exile media outlets. Some of these journalists end up starting their own exile media outlets, joining existing ones, or finding employment with major IPBs such as the VOA, Deutsche Welle, and the BBC. In parallel with these developments, there has been a growing interest in the study of the journalistic practice of exiled journalists and those working in IPBs, in order to reach audiences in their homelands. These studies often emphasise the flight of journalists, their life situations in the host nations, and coping mechanisms in the case of exile media, as well as production routines, audience profiles, and organisational aspects when it comes to IPBs. However, not many studies have addressed this aspect of professionalism from the perspective of self-perception in professional and occupational roles, including these journalists’ understanding of their impact on the political discourse at home. There are, in fact, numerous studies on journalistic role perception globally; however, the attention is usually confined to either aspects of nation-states or international comparative variations. Hence, this PhD study undertakes an examination of the role perception of Ethiopian journalists working in exile media outlets and IPBs concerned primarily with Ethiopia-related media coverage. For its theoretical foundation, the study draws on the existing literature on role perception, alternative media, journalistic practice, and international public broadcasting, which are instrumental in structuring the investigation of role perception in exile media and IPBs. The empirical data for this dissertation substantially relies on in-depth, semi-structured individual interviews with 42 practising Ethiopian journalists, 35 of whom live and work outside their country, Ethiopia. The findings of this study are presented in the four contributions that comprise this dissertation. These contributions, which include three journal articles and a book chapter, can both stand alone as independent studies and converge harmoniously to make up the entirety of the PhD project. The first publication presents an overview of the media situation in Ethiopia, where the journalists consulted in this study come from and where their audiences are situated. Based on the concept of the journalistic paradigm and political parallelism interviews conducted with seven practising local journalists, this paper attempts to delineate the contemporary landscape of media that exhibits ethnic polarisation and state suppression. The second contribution is a book chapter outlining the practice and role of Ethiopian journalists in exile. This investigation of nine journalists working and living in the US, Canada, Europe, and Africa reveals the mirroring of the ethnic polarisation identified in the first publication. This contribution also determines the role of activism and advocacy in fostering political change with a claim of adherence to Western traditional roles by journalists in exile. Unlike the finding in the second publication, a rather uncommon claim by exiled journalists is noted in the third publication, which investigates the practice of exiled journalists working for one media outlet. Through in-depth individual interviews with 10 journalists sheltered on four continents, this publication presents a strong stance against the impact of activism and advocacy. The additional findings of this publication highlight innovative ways of sourcing information from the homeland as well as a distrust in the political changes at home to relocate operations of exile media to the homeland. The fourth publication is a contribution to the other strand of this PhD study, which deals with journalists in IPBs. It is a case study of two IPBs working in Ethiopian languages for Ethiopian audiences, namely the BBC Horn of Africa and the Deutsche Welle Amharic Service. The analysis, based on interviews with 16 journalists, exhibits efforts to challenge Western news values in the news production of these IPBs while, at the same time, attempting to underplay the ethnic polarisation that prevails in the local and exiled journalistic practices. In addition to their de-Westernisation efforts, these journalists tend to take on a bargaining role, as they try to be partially loyal to Western traditional journalistic norms, as required by their employers, while being careful in reporting on culturally unacceptable practices to the audience. Considered together, the findings of the studies in this dissertation contribute to the fields of media, global politics, and mobility by drawing attention to the everincreasing movement of politically active citizens, journalists in particular, to the Global North for the advancement of their contribution to homeland politics by establishing transnational platforms and securing their involvement in existing outlets such as IPBs. In their activities, these journalists demonstrate unique, creative approaches to sourcing and processing news items. They undertakedifferent roles in their sourcing and presentation of news than the journalists working in their homeland or the ones positioned in the host land. This dissertation calls for a review and inclusion of the growing sector of media practice by journalists positioned neither in their homeland nor their host nations in global scholarly investigations of journalism culture and journalistic roles in particular. Global media and communication studies must especially go beyond the nation-state based and global comparative modes of data collection and analysis and be inclusive by considering this growing group of journalists with hybrid features and roles of journalistic practices.

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