EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Making sense of Ethiopian journalists’ prison experiences during Meles Zenawi’s administration: a phenomenological inquiry

Hailegiorgis Mamo Darge () and Amanuel Gebru Woldearegay
Additional contact information
Hailegiorgis Mamo Darge: Addis Ababa University, School of Journalism and Communications
Amanuel Gebru Woldearegay: Addis Ababa University, School of Journalism and Communications

Palgrave Communications, 2024, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-12

Abstract: Abstract This study investigated the agony, tribulations, and trials that private press journalists in Ethiopia experienced firsthand in several detention facilities in Ethiopia for engaging in journalistic activity. The study used the period of the late Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s administration, and it employed a qualitative phenomenological research approach to examine the lived experiences of 12 private press journalists. Alfred Schutz’s “Life World” theory and the Italian fascist political theorist Giovanni Gentile’s Authoritarian Democracy theory were used as lenses to provide a “pure” description of the subject under study. Qualitative data were obtained through semi-structured in-depth interviews. The data were examined using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis as the participants shared their narratives. The main finding indicates that journalists lacked professional and civic freedoms to carry out their duties since the government interjected into their daily lives, imprisoning them and limiting their capacity to have the ultimate say over their work and lives. We suggest that the government should revise impending laws and regulations that hamper freedom of expression in Ethiopia and create a policy requiring its officials to provide information to journalists without regard to their political, social, or other relationships with the media.

Date: 2024
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41599-023-02584-z Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palcom:v:11:y:2024:i:1:d:10.1057_s41599-023-02584-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/palcomms/about

DOI: 10.1057/s41599-023-02584-z

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Palgrave Communications from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:pal:palcom:v:11:y:2024:i:1:d:10.1057_s41599-023-02584-z