Research
My research examines the interplay between journalism, political communication, and digital media systems, with a regional focus on Ethiopia, the broader Sub-Saharan context, and resettled communities in the United States—particularly those from the Horn of Africa. At its core, my work interrogates how communities in liminality—those navigating displacement, sociopolitical uncertainty, and reconfigured identities—use digital platforms to construct public narratives, engage in civic discourse, and negotiate transnational belonging.
In these liminal spaces, digital technologies not only mediate political expression but also reshape interpersonal communication and social cohesion. I explore how online engagement transforms everyday interaction, erodes or reinforces trust, and influences how individuals and communities experience and perform identity across borders.
My research draws on a mixed-methods approach that integrates ethnographic fieldwork, qualitative content analysis, and digital tools such as web scraping, data visualization, and computational text analysis. These methods allow me to trace how platform infrastructures shape discursive norms, mediate institutional trust, and reconfigure both interpersonal communication and broader public spheres.
Peer-Reviewed Publications
Chala, E. H. (2026). From Multidimensional Safety to Risk Ecologies: A Four-Coordinate Analysis of Journalist Exposure in Ethiopia, 1992–2024. Journalism Practice, 1–23. 📄 Read the article · 💻 GitHub repository
Chala, E. H. & Workneh, T. W. (2025). Internet Shutdowns in Ethiopia: Discourses of Digital Sovereignty and Information Suppression amid Political Instability. New Media & Society. 📄 Read the article · 💻 GitHub repository
Lemke, J. & Chala, E. (2016). Tweeting Democracy: An Ethnographic Content Analysis of Social Media Use in the Differing Politics of Senegal and Ethiopia’s Newspapers. Journal of African Media Studies, 8(2), 167–185. 📄 Read the article
Published Datasets
Chala, E. H. (2025). Journalist Safety in Ethiopia, 1992–2024 [Dataset]. Harvard Dataverse. DOI: 10.7910/DVN/FEPB8O · 🗃️ View on DataONE · 💻 GitHub repository
This dataset compiles publicly documented incidents affecting journalists in Ethiopia between 1992 and 2024—including arrests, prosecutions, attacks, abductions, harassment, killings, exile, licensing restrictions, and outlet closures—drawn from archival sources including CPJ, RSF, and IFEX. The corpus enables longitudinal analysis of risk trends across two political eras (EPRDF 1992–2018 and Prosperity Party 2019–2024) and underpins the Journalism Practice article above.
Applied Research & Policy
Chala, E. H. (2024). Empathy: The Key to a More Humane Online World. Analysis and Response Toolkit for Trust (ARTT), Discourse Labs. Funded by the National Science Foundation Convergence Accelerator. 📄 Read the article
Chala, E. H. (2012–2020). Freedom on the Net: Ethiopia. Freedom House — Country researcher and author for nine annual editions of this flagship internet freedom report. 📄 View the 2020 edition
Book
Chala, E. H. (2009). Play Station Video Games amongst Ethiopian Children: An Investigation into Popularity of Play Station Video Games amongst Ethiopian Children in Addis Ababa. VDM Verlag. 📖 View on Amazon
Dissertation
Chala, E. H. (2019). Diaspora Media, Local Politics: Journalism and the Politics of Homeland among the Ethiopian Opposition in the United States. PhD dissertation, University of Oregon.
Current Research Projects
🔹 Crowdsourcing Rebellion: Digital Diasporas and Insurgent Financing in Ethiopia
This collaborative project, conducted with Dr. Seife Ayalew and Dr. Terrence Lyons, investigates the financing mechanisms and mobilization strategies of ethnic-based insurgent groups in Ethiopia, with a particular focus on the TPLF, the Amhara militia known as Fano, and the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA). We examine how members of the Ethiopian diaspora use digital platforms—especially GoFundMe—to raise funds and frame their support for armed groups. The full article, titled Cyber Strategies and Diaspora Dynamics: Exploring Digital Financing in Ethnic Insurgencies in Ethiopia, is currently under review for a special issue of The Civil Wars journal.
🔹 Twin Cities News Comparison
A Digital Content Analysis of Nonprofit News Coverage in the Twin Cities
This project investigates how MinnPost and Sahan Journal frame and report on key civic issues including public safety, educational inequities, and environmental justice. Through a comparative content analysis, the research explores how these outlets construct narratives, represent marginalized voices, and navigate institutional roles within a changing local media landscape.
👉 GitHub Repository: Twin Cities News Comparison
🔹 Media Framing of the Tigray Conflict
A Comparative Analysis of Ethiopian and U.S. News Coverage
In collaboration with Dr. Tewodros Workneh, this project analyzes how the Tigray conflict (2020–2022) was framed in both domestic and international media. The study compares Ethiopian state-owned newspapers with major U.S. outlets, focusing on narrative construction, sourcing practices, tone, and audience positioning.
🔹 Meta Oversight Board Case Analysis
An analysis of Meta Oversight Board case selection patterns, examining transparency and demographic biases in content moderation appeals.
🔹 MN Immigration & Nonprofit Communication
Quantitative content analysis of Twin Cities nonprofit multi-platform communication strategies during immigration enforcement, with reproducible R scripts and data.
🔹 Minnesota Immigration Rhetoric Archive
A curated archive documenting cross-platform coverage of Somali immigration rhetoric and fraud narratives in Minnesota—from mainstream news and government statements to community and advocacy responses.
Journalism & Public Writing
My journalism spans over a decade of reporting on digital rights, press freedom, disinformation, and political communication in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa.
Global Voices (2012–present) — Contributor and former Sub-Saharan Africa Editor. Selected pieces include:
- When Algorithms Bless the Scammers: How Facebook and TikTok Are Failing Ethiopia’s Poor (2025)
- A Clash of Narratives: National Identity and Violent Conflict in Ethiopia (2021)
- How Ethiopia’s Ruling Coalition Created a Playbook for Disinformation (2019)
- Leaked Documents Show That Ethiopia’s Ruling Elites Are Hiring Social Media Trolls (2018)
👉 Full archive on Global Voices
Coda Story — Reporting on authoritarian technology and platform manipulation:
👉 Author profile on Coda Story
The Guardian:
- Ethiopia Scraps Addis Ababa ‘Master Plan’ after Protests Kill 140 (2016)
- Violent Clashes in Ethiopia over ‘Master Plan’ to Expand Addis (2015)
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF):
GenderIT.org:
Translations
Surveillance Self-Defense (SSD) — Amharic Edition
Translated the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Surveillance Self-Defense guide into Amharic, making digital security resources accessible to millions of Amharic speakers.
Media Appearances
Video:
- 🎬 Protecting Journalists from Surveillance in Ethiopia — Freethink Coded (17K views)
- 🎬 FreeZone9Bloggers — Untold Stories (4.8K views)
- 🎬 Prisoners of Conscience — University of Oregon SOJC (1K views)
- 🎬 Endalkachew Chala from Ethiopia — The Washington Post
Podcasts:
- 🎙️ Facebook’s Supreme Court — Radiolab (NPR / WNYC Studios)
- 🎙️ Mis/Disinformation in the Context of the Oromo Protests — We Be Imagining, American Assembly
Methods & Tools
- Ethnographic content analysis
- Semi-structured interviews
- Computational text analysis
- Digital scraping and dataset construction using:
Newspaper3k,Pandas,Jupyter Notebooks,R
For more code and documentation, visit @Endalk-Chala on GitHub.