Numerous alternative digital media outlets have been emerging recently in Lebanon in response to the country’s established traditional media that is highly partisan with editorial agendas often serving the Lebanese political and economic elites. Many of these outlets have been launched initially by independent researchers or civil society activists with …
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The Integration of Politics and Sports in Lebanon
Abstract In Lebanon, sports have been heavily linked to politics and religion. The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of politics on Lebanese sports in the two most prominent sports fields, football and basketball, using the Spiral of Silence and the Two-Step theories investigated through a mixed …
Read More »Superior, Violent and Aggressive: Hegemonic Masculinity in Arabic Music Videos
Abstract Free access to music videos on YouTube has allowed generations of consumers to be exposed to songs from their favorite artists on a daily basis. Presented in the form of music videos, these songs contain visuals that carry several themes including the glorification of violence and the dominance of …
Read More »Book Review | Routledge Handbook on Arab Media
First Edition - Edited By Noureddine Miladi, Noha Mellor (Routledge, 2020) The Routledge Handbook on Arab Media is an encyclopedic depiction of the history, roles, models of ownership, and regulations of print, broadcast, and online media in 20 Arab countries out of the 22 Arab countries represented in the Arab …
Read More »Rami Khouri on Lebanon’s Outlook and What Has Happened to the Country’s Media
On October 17, 2019, protests began in Lebanon with angry and largely disenfranchised citizens calling for a complete overhaul of the country’s unique political system. In the year that has followed, Lebanon has suffered through one disaster after another, with seemingly unending political shifting. On October 22, 2020, former Prime …
Read More »The Changing Identity of a Living Secular Icon: Al Mayadeen’s Iconization of Jamila Bouhired
Abstract In December 2013, the pan-Arab TV station Al Mayadeen orchestrated a big public celebration of the former female fighter Jamila Bouhired. In this article, I analyze Al Mayadeen’s celebration of Bouhired as an iconization (Khalili 2009) and investigate how the TV station uses the icon Bouhired to facilitate a …
Read More »INTERVIEW | Past, Present, and Future Violence in Lebanese Comics
During a lecture entitled “‘I Think We Will be Calm During the Next War’: Past, Present, and Future Violence in Lebanese Comics,” Ghenwa Hayek, assistant professor of Modern Arabic Literature at the University of Chicago, discussed Lebanese comics as a means of reflecting war and conflict. After her presentation she …
Read More »BOOK EXCERPT | Beirut: Past, Present, Future? Memory and Anxiety in Contemporary Lebanese Comics in Beirut, Imagining the City
The field of comics scholarship has expanded radically in the past decade as the medium has entered into the realm of mainstream academic discourse, thanks to the contributions of scholars who are themselves comic artists, like Will Eisner and Scott McCloud, and others, notably Hillary Chute and Jared Gardner.[1] Comics …
Read More »PODCAST | Media Ethics & Migration: From Beirut to American Bombast
Veteran journalist Magda Abu-Fadil speaks with us about how the migration crisis has been covered in Lebanese media and beyond, and issues of media ethics in the Arab world. Magda Abu-Fadil brings years of experience as a foreign correspondent and editor with international news organizations such as Agence France-Presse and United Press International. She is director of Media Unlimited.
Read More »Digital Activism: Efficacies and Burdens of Social Media for Civic Activism
In a comprehensive study of social media usage among social movement organizations in Lebanon, Jad Melki and Sarah Mallat investigate the efficacy of digital technology as a tool for activism. The authors find that while social media platforms offer a number of perceived benefits to activism work, there remain significant obstacles that manifest both on and offline.
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