SUPPORT ETHIOPIA INSIGHT .wpedon-container .wpedon-select, .wpedon-container .wpedon-input { width: 200px; min-width: 200px; max-width: 200px; } Outrage, identity politics, and money now shape transnational discourseEthiopia’s diaspora media is often described as polarized, emotional, or unprofessional. That description is accurate, though still insufficient.For more than three decades, much of this field has operated with glaring professional deficits: weak verification, little editorial discipline, low evidentiary standards, thin institutional accountability, and a persistent confusion between political passion and journalism.What has emerged from this long pattern is a transnational public sphere in which conflict is continuously produced, amplified, and monetized.From 1991 to 2018, a large part of Ethiopian diaspora media devoted extraordinary energy to singling out Tigrayans and alleged or real wrongdoings of the TPLF. Criticism of a ruling party was often necessary. Yet much of the discourse did not remain confined to institutions, officials, or policies; it frequently slid into ethnicization.A governing elite came to be treated as interchangeable with an entire community. Suspicion expanded outward, and resentment hardened into narrative habit. In that environment, media helped normalize the treatment of one ethnic group as a standing object of national grievance.The damage did not end there. Even when its central fixation was Tigrayan power, diaspora media often displayed a wider appetite for provoking tension among ethnic communities and humiliating those with opposing political views.Disagreement was routinely cast as betrayal, contamination, or concealed allegiance. Long before outrage became algorithmically profitable, the field had already settled into a theater of accusation.This tendency was shaped in part by unresolved ideological loyalties. Many influential actors in the diaspora media sphere were marked either by nostalgia for the imperial order under Haile Selassie or by attachment, direct or indirect, to the Derg era under Mengistu Haile Mariam.Those loyalties informed editorial priorities, political vocabulary, and the emotional register of broadcasting. In many cases, diaspora media functioned as an extension of older political identities, repackaged for newer platforms.This broader pattern has been noted in scholarship on Ethiopian media, which describes a field increasingly shaped by ethnic polarization, political parallelism, and a hybrid style that blends journalism with activism and ethnonational agendas.That diagnosis shifts attention beyond individual broadcasters. The issue is not simply misconduct by a few actors, but a structure that has long rewarded emotional loyalty over professional restraint.Factional MediaOne of the clearest illustrations of this trajectory was ESAT TV. It rose to prominence as an anti-regime broadcaster during the EPRDF era. Yet from early on, its editorial culture reflected weaknesses that later became widespread across the diaspora media field: limited professional capacity and a persistent tendency toward ethnicized political narration.However significant its role in opposition politics at a particular moment, its longer legacy is inseparable from the wider normalization of corrosive discourse it helped entrench.That legacy includes the language it made politically imaginable. ESAT is widely remembered for the infamous invocation of “draining the sea to catch the fish,” a phrase whose meaning in the Ethiopian context cannot be detached from currents of collective targeting and the dehumanization of the people of Tigray in general.In a country where ethnicity is deeply embedded in socioeconomic and political contestation, such rhetoric may reasonably be read as carrying genocidal undertones, even if any definitive classification requires careful contextual and historical scrutiny.Because such language operates within intensely charged structures of identity and power, its danger lies not only in what is explicitly stated, but also in what it normalizes, signals, and prepares.Its subtext is difficult to miss. It belongs to a discursive environment in which communities, not only political actors, become carriers of collective blame.Such rhetoric also thrives in conditions where scrutiny is structurally difficult. Much of this media is broadcast in Amharic, Afaan Oromo, Tigrinya, and other languages, and its full interpretation often requires translation, contextualization, and sustained expert review.That process is costly and slow. Many broadcasters are aware of this. Operating from democratic Western countries, they can rely on coded or culturally embedded language, benefiting from the fact that meaningful scrutiny is expensive, slow, and often absent. In that sense, permissive conditions are part of how the system functions.Oromia Media Network (OMN) illustrates a different but related dimension of the same problem. Research on Ethiopian diaspora media has identified OMN and ESAT as two especially influential platforms in shaping homeland politics from the United States.OMN emerged during the rise of Oromo dissent and became closely associated with the articulation of Oromo political grievance. While its historical significance is undeniable, this does not translate into professional rigor.In highly polarized contexts, media that presents itself as the authentic voice of a wounded constituency can shift from representation into emotionally charged agitation.Mobilization in such settings often hardens into a style of broadcasting that privileges anger, moral absolutism, and collective hostility.The Ethiopian case cannot therefore be reduced to a single outlet or political camp. ESAT and OMN differ in orientation, language, constituency, and symbolic world.Yet both illustrate how diaspora broadcasting has often functioned less as journalism governed by professional norms than as identity-driven political media shaped by grievance, loyalty, and competition for influence.The rise of Abiy Ahmed only rearranged this structure. Figures associated with earlier opposition broadcasting moved toward support for the new government. Some returned to Ethiopia. Others aligned themselves, explicitly or implicitly, with the Abiy Ahmed administration, including during the Tigray war.Others broke away and formed rival outlets. Ethio 360 emerged from this fractured environment and became one of the most influential forces shaping diaspora media discourse between roughly 2019 and 2023.Yet it reproduced the same structural weaknesses: personalization of politics, emotional absolutism, factional rivalry, and the conversion of political tension into continuous content. Its later fragmentation only reinforced the pattern.Tigray Media House, established in 2018 as a counterweight to entrenched anti-Tigrayan narratives in the diaspora, illustrates a similar dynamic from another direction. It emerged in response to a deeply hostile media environment, especially as anti-Tigrayan rhetoric intensified.But it appears to have been shaped by the same corrosive pressures, resulting in internal division, organizational fragility, and factional strain. Its fragmentation points to a reality that cuts across ideology and constituency, rooted in the structure of the field itself.Outrage EconomyOver the last decade, a new generation of media activists and self-styled journalists has emerged. They are more digitally fluent and more adept at translating political conflict into sustained engagement.But the underlying logic has only hardened. Older patterns of grievance, hostility, simplification, and personalization have merged with a digital economy that rewards outrage and penalizes restraint. What once appeared intermittently now operates continuously, turning political expression into a market.Today, many Ethiopian diaspora media platforms function within an attention economy where emotion draws audiences in, outrage retains them, and revenue follows. Conflict is not only reported but curated to maintain engagement.Research on partisan media and misperception helps clarify this dynamic. Emotionally charged environments intensify hostility and deepen misperception by encouraging audiences to process political information through alignment rather than verification.This is why so much diaspora media now privileges certainty over inquiry. It produces finished judgments rather than open analysis. Audiences are not simply informed; they are oriented toward fixed alignments: who to distrust, who to despise, and which injuries must remain unresolved.Some actors derive relevance, influence, and income from sustaining this environment. Research on digital platforms and polarization describes how conflict entrepreneurs benefit from architectures that amplify divisive content and reward sustained antagonism.This logic also helps explain a defining feature of the ecosystem: persistent fundraising. Many producers and owners operate within a continuous cycle of solicitation. Livestreams blend into donation appeals. Emergency campaigns and support drives become routine. The audience is repeatedly mobilized as a financial resource.The methods of collection raise further questions. Some platforms solicit funds through GoFundMe and similar channels, often framed in nonprofit or community-centered terms. At the same time, revenue may come from YouTube monetization alongside cash contributions at dinners, meetings, and gatherings.Public data on these practices remains limited. Still, reports of individual media owners raising substantial sums in single events raise legitimate questions about transparency, taxation, and oversight, particularly in the United States. At minimum, the flow of money in this field is unusually opaque.The internal culture reflects this instability. Factionalism, jealousy, internal conflict, and open hostility are not exceptions but recurring features. Alliances fracture quickly. Personal disputes are frequently converted into political content.Many who speak in the language of truth, morality, and national responsibility often fail to reflect those standards in their own practice. A system built on personalized authority and emotional mobilization leaves little room for institutional seriousness.More troubling is the resistance to growth. Many of the loudest voices show little sustained interest in training, research discipline, editorial development, or serious study. Their authority is theatrical rather than earned, reflecting a deeper indifference to professionalism itself.Social FalloutThe consequences are cognitive, social, and intergenerational.In Ethiopian diaspora communities, media consumption is often shared and difficult to isolate. Listening habits bleed into family and communal space. Political broadcasts, conspiratorial monologues, and hostile livestreams are frequently played aloud in shared environments, shaping the emotional atmosphere of households.Younger generations are thus socialized into a political grammar shaped by hostility and moral absolutism. Research on political socialization shows that communication environments involving parents, media, and youth play a central role in shaping political understanding over time.In such conditions, media influence becomes concentrated within households, where one individual can effectively shape the political climate of others. Inflammatory content is not only consumed; it is transmitted.This helps explain how cognitive distortion becomes communal rather than individual—not as clinical decline, but as an erosion of shared judgment. Complexity begins to feel threatening. Contrary evidence is absorbed as confirmation of bias or conspiracy. Communities become trapped in self-reinforcing interpretive systems, narrowing the space for democratic reasoning.Research on hate speech and ethnicized media environments similarly shows that repeated exposure shapes perceptions of targeted groups and of one’s own social position.In diaspora contexts where media discourse extends into religious, cultural, and informal networks, this effect intensifies. Repeated narratives become normalized across settings until they appear self-evident. Conflict becomes ambient, embedded in everyday social and moral life.Shared ResponsibilityNone of this should be read as an endorsement of the Ethiopian state. Critiquing diaspora media does not validate state propaganda. The failures of one sphere do not absolve the other. The deeper issue is a broader culture of irresponsibility across institutions that claim public authority.If this media order is to be addressed seriously, sentimental claims about its democratic promise must be set aside. Whatever limited corrective role diaspora media once played has been overshadowed by a more destructive reality.Any platform soliciting public funds should be expected to disclose basic financial information. Any outlet claiming moral authority should meet basic editorial standards. Training, fact-checking, research discipline, and accountability are minimum requirements for credibility. Host states also retain regulatory tools where fundraising opacity and questionable financial practices arise.Ultimately, responsibility also lies with audiences. Media systems are sustained by participation. Viewership, loyalty, funding, and repetition signal demand. Critiquing sensationalism while rewarding it reproduces the conditions that sustain it.Ethiopia’s diaspora media now occupies a difficult position. It presents itself as political engagement while eroding the conditions that make meaningful engagement possible. By turning conflict into currency, it reproduces, normalizes, and transmits it.When that happens, conflict is no longer simply reported. It becomes a way of life. .wpedon-container .wpedon-select, .wpedon-container .wpedon-input { width: 200px; min-width: 200px; max-width: 200px; } Query or correction? Email us window.addEventListener("sfsi_functions_loaded", function(){if (typeof sfsi_widget_set == "function") {sfsi_widget_set();}}); While this commentary contains the author’s opinions, Ethiopia Insight will correct factual errors.Main photo: Tamagn Beyene, a founding figure of ESAT TV, greets Abiy Ahmed with a warm handshake during the Prime Minister’s visit to the United States, July 2018. Source: Amhara Media CorporationPublished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. You may not use the material for commercial purposes.The post Conflict Became Currency in Ethiopia’s Diaspora Media appeared first on Ethiopia Insight.