Audience Reception Analysis on the Documentary "Ye Fitih Seqoka"

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2019 in the subject Communications - Miscellaneous, grade: A, , course: Senior Essay, language: English, abstract: On December 11, 2018 three Ethiopian television channels (ETV, Fana Tv and Walta Tv) broadcasted a documentary titled "Yefitih Seqoka" which narrated about human right violations committed on prisoners by prison administrators. Following its transmission the documentary immediately became a matter of great debate and discussion both online and offline. The tension, the rush and the Facebook hash tags that went viral were the motivations behind the selection of this topic for a study. The aim of the study was to assess how the audience interprets the messages transmitted by the documentary "Yefith seqoka". "How students interpret the message of the documentary film?"; "How students react after watching the documentary?" and "what is their thought on representation of subjects in the film?" are the questions that the study aims to answer. Qualitative research method was employed to answer the above research questions. As the method is most often associated with reception analysis, which is the focus of the study, two qualitative data collection methods were used. They are focus group discussions with students of Mekelle University, Adi-haqi campus and interviews with lecturers of journalism and communication. Convenience and purposive sampling methods were utilized to select the necessary samples for the study. To analyze the collected data thematic data analysis method was used. The findings indicate that the majority of the participants have agreed on that the messages and the representations of subjects in the documentary were negative and have no relevance to the sociocultural context of the country. Considering the findings of the study the researcher recommended that Representation of subjects in this kind of documentaries should be put in a way that avoids negative generalizations.