Legal Frameworks and Issues of Social Media Use for Politics

Abstract

This study intends to explore legal frameworks and ethical considerations that would regulate social media use to promote politics and for social interaction in the context of Ethiopia. Apparently, social medias are found convenient, effective, and less expensive to market political agendas and to reach out voters easily. Particularly, they are ideal to attract young voters who have low interest in politics because of ease of generating contents, commenting and reflecting on posts, ease of sharing contents to large audience breaking down barriers to freedom of expression. Data for the study were gathered through domain expert involved focus group discussion (FGD). Thematic analysis approach was used to generate themes and insights from the data. The study reveals interesting results on two key relevant issues: media law and individual rights. From the perspectives of media law and policy, the study uncovered paucity and loopholes connected to nurturing a culture of constructive critique on political matters, the need to have sound communication policy at all key governmental institutions, weak regulatory system in terms of crafting and enforcing relevant media laws, the tendency of demeaning accountability on the side of social media companies and social media users, the need to explore legal and diplomatic pressures on social media companies to discharge their corporate social responsibilities by protecting the platform they have developed not to be used to incite conflict, violence, and human right abuses. With regard to upholding fundamental human rights, social medias have provided great opportunities to the general public to easily air out their views and promote political agendas they support. Social medias also paved the way to realize freedom of speech, which presupposes orderly liberty that do not grant a license to threaten individual’s existential rights opening the door for gross human right violations.