From Rhetoric to Reality: The Role of Political Framing in Shaping Understanding and Behaviour During the Tigray Conflict

Abstract

This article examines graffiti found in the Martyrs’ Memorial Exhibition Hall in Mekele, Tigray during the conflict in Ethiopia. It offers critical insights into the impact of the Ethiopian government’s strategic political framing of the war in Tigray. Once a prominent commemorative site in the region, the Memorial Complex was transformed into a space for hostile expression by occupying Ethiopian soldiers, reflecting broader state narratives of demonization and ethnic polarization. The study argues that the graffiti is not merely vandalism, but a physical and psychological artefact of internalized state propaganda promoted by the Ethiopian government. It highlights how elite discourse blurred distinctions between the Tigray People’s Liberation Front and the wider Tigrayan population, justifying violence through a logic of collective guilt. The analysis further considers the cross-border amplification of these narratives by the neighbouring Eritrean regime, which helped to create a regional echo chamber of animosity. The graffiti’s key themes—hostility, ethnic slurs, political sarcasm, nationalist slogans, religious references, and self-affirmation—reveal how public rhetoric permeated individual behaviours and left lasting marks on culturally significant spaces. The defacement of the Martyrs’ Memorial Complex reflects how strategic framing can materialize in acts of symbolic violence, producing psychological as well as physical scars.