Media Framing Of Human Rights In Rwanda (2020-2022)

Rwanda is a nation that has experienced gross human rights violations from 1959 through to1994 when the Genocide Against the Tutsi which was planned ant tested for decades by the post-independence governments.For many years the international community and the international media pay little to no attention at all until the Genocide happened when local hate media oversaw the butcher of over one million innocent people,the international media that as many scholars believe could have prevented or stopped the one of the grave atrocities of 20^th Century aban-doned Rwanda until the Rwanda Patriotic Army fighters brought it to an end after defeating the Genocidal regime.After the Genocide against the Tutsi,many international media giants developed interest in Rwanda,first praising the development milestones achieved under President,Paul Kagame and suddenly human rights and democracy/political space became common frames for the interna-tional media from the west criticising the new policies.Those Media have ever since accused RPF and President Kagame of human rights violations and authoritarianism.With many scholars focusing on the role of the media during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi and general por-trayal of African image,little attention has been paid to the framing of Rwanda with human rights.Due to the international reach of the BBC and France24,this study addresses the identi-fied research gap using the BBC and France24 as case studies.The two media outlets are also af-filiated with the British and French governments respectively which display close ideological paths politically,and are Rwanda’s main development partners.The objective is to find out the human rights frame and how both media use the frame when reporting on Rwanda and figure out the intentions.The study employs Framing,Agenda Setting and Political Economy of the media theories to guide its Content analysis methodology assessing a sample of 100 articles published in the period between January 1 2020 to December 31 2022 by two targeted media outlets.The findings of this study indicate that both BBC and France24 have framed their stories with human rights negatively and with clear bias on Rwanda’s government.The study concludes that both BBC and France24 did not adhere to journalistic principles and instead serve political and economic interests of their home countries and other international actors.The implication is that,Rwanda’s image is being tarnished in the process increases pressure from international de-velopment partners which may hinder her development efforts,but on the other hand,abandon-ing journalistic principles will have a negative impact on the international media giants as they lose credibility/trust among global audiences.