ARM Project Deliverable D5.1, read directly, confirms Ethiopia's state-organized 'media army' apparatus

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Pohjonen, Kebede & Aalen's ARM Project working paper "Information Suppression in Ethiopia" (Deliverable D5.1, dated 25 February 2026) names and describes, in its own words, the apparatus Schroeder et al.'s preprint had only summarized at second hand: a government-organized "media army" encompassing local officials, party members, and civil servants — especially communications-bureau experts — "pooled together and deployed whenever there is a need for coordinated messaging." The government initially dismissed claims that a digital media army existed, but the paper documents several local (Woreda) communications offices now openly posting about it on their own Facebook pages. The paper also names specific paid activists — most notably Seyoum Teshome, who received a Medal of Honor from the Ethiopian National Defence Forces (ENDF), was also made an honorary ENDF member, and at that ceremony was tasked by the Chief of Staff, along with other activists, to "lead the digital war for the Army" — alongside everyday TikTok influencers co-opted for government messaging and diaspora-constituency mobilization.

This is a technical/organizational-mechanism claim and clears the sourcing floor at Tier 1: the authors' own working paper, on their own project's site, describing their own mixed-methods research. It directly answers question-verify-ethiopia-media-army-red-sea-ai-propaganda-primaries for the media-army half of that question; see claim-arm-d51-global-voices-not-independent-shared-author for the caveat on how this source relates to the paper's other cited primary. Further findings from this same working paper (its "overwhelm, don't persuade" argument, its @ETFactCheck co-option case, its INSA/EAII institutional claim) are routed to question-corroborate-arm-d51-ethiopia-media-army-single-source rather than promoted here — this is the third claim-note resting directly on this one unrefereed deliverable, which reaches the sourcing floor's single-source concentration cap.