Ethiopia’s general election took place amid heightened political tension, ongoing conflict in several regions and deep public scepticism about the process. Before the vote, there were widespread concerns from opposition voices and citizens about security disruptions, voter registration irregularities and the exclusion of key areas such as Tigray, raising doubts that the polls would be free and fair.
Major opposition parties, including the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC), Balderas for Democracy, and Arena Tigray jointly called for sweeping political and institutional reforms before the election, warning that proceeding without these changes would amount to ‘a calendar exercise, not democracy.’ These events created a fertile environment for disinformation, where narratives about legitimacy, possible violence and political performance circulated rapidly across platforms like Facebook, TikTok and X.
Disinformation has been a recurring feature of the country’s recent election cycles. The 2021 elections, which were delayed by Covid-19, took place in a highly digital information environment, where misinformation and disinformation circulated before, during and after election day. The content included fabricated documents, fake accounts, manipulated audio and misleading or misattributed reports about voter registration, polling stations, security incidents and election results. Similar patterns re-emerged in 2026, with statements taken out of context, AI-generated media, repurposed videos and selective narratives designed to polarise voters or strengthen one side’s claim to power.
This report uses two frameworks to analyse these trends. The open-source DISARM framework describes disinformation incidents through tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs), enabling the mapping of disinformation ecosystems as interconnected systems rather than isolated incidents.
The ABCDE framework is used to assess how narratives are constructed and sustained. It examines five key areas: actors (who is involved), behaviour (what they do), content (what they create and distribute), degree (how widely the content spreads and whom it reaches), and effect (the overall impact of the case and whom it affects).
Together, these frameworks show both how influence operations work and how their narratives are created, spread and received in the country’s digital information space.