Framing of the Ethio-Egypt Conflict on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam’s (GERD) Water Filling: ETV and Al-Jazeera in Focus

Abstract

News frames determine what is selected, what is excluded, and what is emphasized. This study examined how ETV and Aljazeera framed the Ethio-Egypt conflict on the GERD first-round water-filling on their television news coverage from January 15, 2020 to August 15, 2020. The research used both quantitative and qualitative methods as principal approaches to analyze the contents of the selected media news. Purposive sampling was used to choose the sampled news for the research. A total of 60 news stories were analyzed from both media. As a theoretical foundation for this study, framing theory was used. Based on the research questions and the theoretical framework of framing theory, the study reveals that the selected media outlets mostly framed the GERD water-filling in terms of conflict, human interest, economic consequences, mutual benefit, and attribution of responsibility frames. Comparatively, the most dominant frame for Al Jazeera was the conflict frame while the human interest frame was for ETV. The findings also revealed that the content framing of the word choice of Al Jazeera was neutral to Ethiopia and biased to Egypt. However, ETV was biased to Ethiopia. Diplomacy efforts and sovereignty rights were found to be the most frequently reported themes in both media. Government officials were used as key sources of information in both media while reporting on the GERD. Based on the findings, is the study recommended that the media should improve their conflict news framing in such a way that does not provoke or exacerbate the conflict.