Solomon Kebede Gebremeskel

My research interests include media and social movement, media practice and journalists in exile, media and conflict, exile media, international public broadcasting, journalism practice, role perception,  and de-westernization. 

My PhD project at the Department of Global Development and Planning, University of Agder is research on media practice by Ethiopian journalists working for International Public Broadcasters/IPBs/. It’s a study of media production to reach homeland audiences from international newsrooms based away from the homeland. The outlets produce and disseminate news content in different languages targeting audiences living in the native land of the journalists.

Three IPBs working in Ethiopian languages by Ethiopian journalists; run with German, British, and U.S. financial and material backing are the empirical focus of the study. It tries to look at the professional practice and role perception of journalists through qualitative interviews, observation, and document analysis.

My MA studies come from Ethiopia and Norway. My first thesis dealt with two crucial aspects of Ethiopian everyday life - environment awareness and radio. I used techniques of audience research including content analysis of media products to find out the success of a national environment-focused radio magazine. The other MA study in Global Journalism at NLA University College examined the work of a group of young exiled Ethiopian journalists running an internet-based media (radio and text) that has most of its audience in Ethiopia. It investigates how the journalists who are expelled and some of them sentenced in absentia by the regime are trying to reach their mostly young audience at home from their countries of asylum in Africa, Europe, and the USA. Besides my research engagement, I am involved in teaching mainly in areas of media studies, political and strategic communication.