Abstract

This research aims to explore to what extent the popular social media positively and negatively affected Ethiopia's recent political transition. Further, the research focuses on how the social media played a role in leading to the overthrow of the state capture by the authoritarian and how they are playing role in the process since then. Qualitative research and analysis have been applied to depict the impact of social media on Ethiopia's recent political transition. The findings of this research have revealed that a large number of the literature as stated positive feedback about the role of social media on Ethiopia’s political transmission such as mobilizing people to stand against the overthrown government, support the reformist actions, expose illegal actions, criticizing all the dangerous movements and creating awareness among the community easily and promptly. Some of the literatures stated the negative impacts of social media networks such as spreading/disseminating fake news from fake accounts, rumors, individual opinions/feelings and ethnic-based information that leads the community to unrest, challenge the current political transition in Ethiopia. To control bad actors over the social media, the government should do many things beyond and aforementioned promulgating laws. Future researches also recommended on social media analytics aiming at collecting, storing, monitoring, analyzing, and summarizing politically relevant user-generated content from social media.

Key words: Social media, political transition, social media for politics, role of social media, Ethiopian politics, Ethiopia.