Contestation vs. conciliation: Social media political rhetoric fuelling the Ethiopia war, 2020-2022

The severe armed conflict in Ethiopia since November 2020 – the start of an armed insurrection by a party (TPLF) in northern Ethiopia - has been framed and impacted upon by digital offensives and global media reporting in peculiar ways. Representations of the conflict events, actors and victims have had a divisive effect on political debate and cooperation in Ethiopia, thus fuelling communal divisions and preventing compromise. The arena of shared politics in federal Ethiopia was further fragmented, with a notable role played by influential global news media and the ‘social’ media. Their politic rhetoric went beyond strategies of persuasion into forms of partisan intimidation, misinformation, bias and even fiction. As with all early 21th-century armed conflicts (cf. the Middle East, Myanmar, or Ukraine), the digital sphere and media manipulation on Ethiopia are shown to be essential domains of discursive battle, extending real life battles, and impacting on international diplomatic responses. The paper analyses some key aspects of the evolving conflict from the perspective of repeated digital ‘memes’ – ‘famine’, ‘genocide’, ‘blockade’, ethnic cleansing’ - and narrative frames – ‘underdog’, ‘self-defense’, ‘peaceful resolution’, ‘truce’ - produced by adherents of one or the other party in the conflict. This contemporary (digital) political rhetoric subverts itself and creates a world of semi-fictitious appearances that perpetuate conflict. The problem of addressing ‘Sophist’ arguments is the same as in Plato’s time (cf. Gorgias), but current digital media allow political rhetoric to massively go beyond the conventions of shared discourse. Using examples, I argue that, beyond the analysis of the digital and news media products themselves, new ways have to be found to ‘reality-check’ or reduce these products/representations to themes amenable for public discussion and eventual shared compromise (cf. Norris 2017: 630). This might help (re)building political rhetoric in a constructive, and not exclusively polemic, manner.