- Trial lecture starts at 10.00
- Public defence starts at 12.00
Title of trial lecture: Religious pluralism in Ethiopia: implications for the relations between religious organisations, the state and the media.
Disputation chair: Dean Ingunn Folkestad Breistein
Assessment committee:
- First opponent: Mia Lövheim, Uppsala University
- Second opponent: Lovise Aalen, Chr. Michelsen Institute
- Chair of assessment committee: Pål Ketil Botvar, UiA
Supervisors in the doctoral work:
- Main supervisor: Ida Marie Høeg, UiA
- Co-supervisor: David Herbert, UiB
Summary of thesis
The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church (EOTC) represents about 44% of Ethiopia's population, making it the second largest Orthodox Christian population in the world after Russia. This church served as the state church for more than sixteen centuries before being disestablished by a communist government that legalised scientific atheism in 1974 and an ethno-federalist state that proclaimed strict secularism in 1991. After more than half a century of legal and institutional disenfranchisement from the state structure, religion has returned in recent years as part of Ethiopian public discourse, including by senior government officials.
The purpose of this article-based thesis is to examine how Ethiopian traditional and digital media frame, represent, and contest religious controversies involving the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church (EOTC). It focuses on how religious authorities, political figures, and other stakeholders shape public discourse and how journalists perceive their role in reporting on these issues. It also explores how mediatized and discursive dynamics shape the authority and continuity of the EOTC in contemporary Ethiopia. The research is grounded in theories of the mediatization of religion, religious othering, religious authority, religion as a matter of public interest, religious space, and survival.
The research employed a multi-method approach comprising a national survey of 221 journalists, as well as critical discourse and framing analyses of media coverage of major controversies. These included the Meskel Square dispute, the killing of Ethiopian Christians in Libya in 2015, and the speeches of competing religious authorities on social media.
The results show that the EOTC is under what many members and leaders experience as increasing existential threat due to systemic government interference and growing religious competition, particularly from Protestant and Muslim groups who strategically utilize the media to create opposing narratives. These groups are reframing Ethiopia’s politico-religious history, challenging the EOTC’s moral authority, and advocating for different religious futures. While journalists acknowledge the Church’s historical and cultural importance, many of them perceive media coverage as inadequate or biased, or as remaining silent in the face of its marginalization.
In response, religious authorities from the EOTC engage in a discourse of survival that is rooted in tradition and divine authority. Meanwhile, competing religious authorities are invoking narratives of historical exclusion, with some calling for the renewal of the EOTC, particularly on digital media platforms. Consequently, the media become contested spaces where religious boundaries are redefined and authority is restructured.
Overall, the study demonstrates the central role of mediatized religious discourse in reshaping religious authority and national identity, with significant implications for the position of the EOTC and the evolving religious landscape in Ethiopia.
Four articles are produced to address the aims of the study. Article 1 examines how the religious aspect of the brutal killing of 30 Ethiopian Christians in Libya by the IS in 2015 was framed by three selected Ethiopian newspapers, namely Addis Zemen, Addis Admass, Ethiopian Reporter representing Ethiopian state and private media. The content and framing analysis of the media content of the event revealed that the religious aspect of the story was ignored and the framing power of the EOTC was found to be limited compared to the government, which steered and shifted public opinion to its advantage. The EOTC was to a large extent ignored as an important religious tradition in Ethiopia by the mass media. I argue that this neglect is related to the negative portrayal of the EOTC by post-1974 governments and journalists' perception of secularism as the reporting of religion-neutral information.
Through a descriptive survey, Article 2 examines how Ethiopian journalists (N=221) perceive the status of the EOTC in relation to ethnic and religious groups and the government, as well as recent controversies and challenges facing the church and media coverage of them. While most have a positive view of the EOTC and its relationship with ethnic and other religious groups, the ongoing dynamics are seen as keeping it under existential threat from ethnic divisions orchestrated by systemic and structural government interference. Rather than reporting on the challenges facing the church in accordance with professional journalistic standards, Ethiopia's mainstream media are seen as ignoring them. State interference appears to be the most significant form of influence. While it is felt that EOTC issues are rarely covered in state, state-affiliated and private (editorially controlled) media, social media sites (YouTube, Facebook and Twitter) and EOTC-related media are seen as places where these issues are presented more often.
Using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), Article 3 analyses the discursive practices of three widely discussed video speeches by religious authorities representing the three major Ethiopian religions - EOTC, Islam and Protestantism. The findings show that while Protestant groups are committed to supporting the government, Muslim groups maintain temporary support as a tactic to advance the Muslim cause and further weaken the position of the religious other (i.e. the EOTC). The article shows how the politicization of religion, mainly by supportive Protestant and calculating Muslim groups with different agendas, on the one hand, and a religiously motivated and repressive government, on the other, have created a 'religious other' (i.e. the EOTC). The discourse of historical marginalization has been used to justify both supportive and calculative tendencies of continued religious repression in the reconstructed new Ethiopia. On the other hand, a struggle for justice to curb this development is religiously justified by the EOTC to defend its position.
Using space as a conceptual framework, Article 4 examines the nature and implications of a controversy that arose over Ethiopia's historically important Meskel Square. Critical discourse analysis of media content related to the controversy revealed that both intrinsic and relational aspects of space were at play. The EOTC, which historically owns the space, considers the square to be intrinsically religious and therefore claims to use it exclusively for worshipping. On the other hand, the government and Protestant and Muslim religious groups have given the space a new meaning as a shared place of worship based on their new relationship, which includes the possibility of claiming the space for the celebration of religious holidays. It is argued that the conflict is being fought as a symbolic struggle to assert and exercise power, rather than a struggle over resource or territory. Except for the commercial weekly Addis Maleda, Ethiopia's mainstream media have overlooked the dispute. Instead, the public debate has been conducted by individuals who formally and informally represent different religious and political groups on social media.
Finally, I argue that contrary to the assumption that religious content is primarily shaped by media logic, religious reporting in Ethiopia, particularly in traditional media, is also significantly influenced by politico-religious logic involving systemic editorial control and cultural constraints.
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