"Over the past few years, Lebanon has witnessed an alarming increase in attacks on peaceful speech and expression. The country’s criminal defamation laws, which authorize imprisonment up to three years for peaceful speech, have been used against citizens who have written about pressing social issu
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es, including corruption. Government data indicates a 325% increase in defamation cases for online speech between 2015 and 2018. Based on research conducted over the course of a year and extensive interviews with defendants in criminal defamation cases, lawyers, government officials, and civil society, Human Rights Watch found that the prosecution, security agencies, and judiciary behaved in ways that suggested bias in favour of the complainants. These patterns illustrate the potential for public officials, religious groups, and security agencies to misuse criminal defamation laws as a tool for retaliation and repression. Individuals who had been sued faced a number of serious consequences as a result of the criminal process, including physical abuse and privacy violations during interrogations, pretrial detention, family separation, and considerable mental and financial stress. The increasing use of criminal defamation laws has had a chilling effect on free speech in Lebanon." (Back cover)
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"The Gender Sensitive Public Communications Project was implemented by Search for Common Ground in Lebanon, together with its local partner Abaad, with an aim to promote women’s participation in politics through the production of gender sensitive television drama and short films. Specifically, the
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project was designed to increase the belief of television audiences in women’s political leadership capacity and to strengthen the capacity of television professionals to produce gender sensitive programs [...] A total of 416.033 viewers have watched two mini series that were aired on the Lebanese TV channel Al Jadeed. With an average minute rating of 5.35%, the performance of the project’s mini series is considered medium as compared to other popular TV series broadcasted on Al Jadeed. Close to 97% of the surveyed participants who have watched the two mini series and/or the four short films, stated that they felt the stories addressed real concerns and issues in the Lebanese society, and that the storylines were realistic. The evaluation findings suggest that the workshops conducted with the students were successful in strengthening the participants’ capacities to produce gender sensitive programs with an aim to promote the participation of women in politics. The workshops were able to increase their knowledge on specific topics, such as gender related legal matters, mapping of ideas and gender sensitive writing. More than half of the students who participated in the workshop, and who were interviewed during the evaluation, confirmed having gained knowledge on gender related topics, and all students who took part in the online survey answered that the workshop had increased their knowledge on producing gender sensitive programs “a lot." (Executive summary, page 5-6)
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"Pretty Liar" explores the rise of language and gender politics on Lebanese television to tell the untold story of the co-evolution of Lebanese television and its audiences and how the civil war of 1975-1991 affected that co-evolution. The shift in public interest in television has been widely ackno
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wledged and interpreted within an institutional context as a victory of the neo-liberal entrepreneurship of a new, agile brand over the government inefficiency of Lebanon's national station, Télé Liban. Yet, the role of the Lebanese Civil War in reshaping national television and broadcasting in Arab media following the emergence of the Lebanese Broadcasting Company in 1985 has been unexplored. Based on empirical data and grounded in theory by Arab and global researchers, "Pretty Liar" offers textual analyses of five Lebanese fictional series, three major and several additional periodicals, and nine literary works, and provides context from unscripted interviews with television administrators, anchors, actors, and freelance contributors, print journalists, and audience members. Khazaal seeks to offer new insight into how entertainment television became a site for politics and political resistance, feminism, and the cradle for post-war Lebanon due to the shift in practices and standards of legitimacy." (Publisher description)
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"Les médias reflètent-ils les sociétés telles qu’elles sont aujourd’hui ou bien ne reflètent-ils que les tendances majoritaires ? Comment mettre en lumière les différences et les particularismes sans encourager le communautarisme et contribuer aux divisions ? Le rôle des médias est-il d
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e rapporter les faits ou de contribuer activement à une certaine vision de la société ? Les critères professionnels du journalisme sont-ils suffisants pour éviter les discours de haine et les messages exacerbant les tensions communautaires ? Lancé par CFI et le centre SKeyes pour la liberté de la presse et de la culture (de la Fondation Samir Kassir), le projet Naseej – qui signifie « tissage » en arabe – s’appuie sur les médias pour restaurer et maintenir un débat équilibré autour de ces questions. En examinant ce que les médias libanais, syriens et irakiens publient et diffusent, le langage utilisé, les concepts promus, les groupes qui y sont représentés et ceux qui ne le sont pas, Naseej tente de promouvoir une vision inclusive du journalisme. L’objet n’est pas de demander aux journalistes de restaurer la paix ou d’éviter les conflits, mais de contribuer à l’émergence de conditions plus propices au dialogue à travers une meilleure qualité d’information vérifiée et professionnelle, évitant les généralisations et les stéréotypes. Il n’est pas de demander aux médias d’accorder un traitement privilégié aux minorités face à la majorité, mais de mettre en lumière les difficultés auxquelles font face les citoyens, tous les citoyens, quelles que soient leurs appartenances. Ce livret présente la synthèse d’une étude, réalisée en octobre 2017, sur la couverture médiatique de la diversité dans les médias irakiens, libanais et syriens, réalisée par la Fondation Adyan et la Fondation Samir Kassir." (Introduction)
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"Roots of the New Arab Film deals with the generation of filmmakers from across North Africa and the Middle East who created an international awareness of Arab film from the mid-1980s onwards. These seminal filmmakers experienced the moment of national independence first-hand in their youth and reta
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ined a deep attachment to their homeland. Although these aspiring filmmakers had to seek their training abroad, they witnessed a time of filmic revival in Europe - Fellini and Antonioni in Italy, the French New Wave, and British Free Cinema. Returning home, these filmmakers brought a unique insider/outsider perspective to bear on local developments in society since independence, including the divide between urban and rural communities, the continuing power of traditional values and the status of women in a changing society. As they made their first films back home, the feelings of participation in a worldwide movement of new, independent filmmaking was palpable." (Publisher description)
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"The retrospection, which covers Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and the United Arab Emirates, includes the following highlights: Internet penetration has increased in every country since 2013. The biggest increase occurred in Lebanon – from 58 percent to 91 percent in the la
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st five years; Smartphones are the ‘go-to’ device, connecting 97 percent of people to the internet as declining numbers of people (45 percent) rely on computers as their primary source of internet access; In terms of social media, fewer Arab national now use Facebook (74 percent) and Twitter (27 percent), while Instagram and Snapchat have risen to 40 percent and 29 percent respectively, due perhaps in part to the privacy these applications provide; Direct messaging is ubiquitous, with 97 percent of people using it; 47 percent of people send messages to group chats; Trust among Arab nationals in mass media is widespread, but figures have declined in several countries such as Tunisia (from 64 percent to 56 percent) and Qatar (from 69 percent to 64 percent); Most Gulf nationals say news media in their country is credible, but nationals elsewhere tend to disagree (Qataris are among the highest group in this respect with 62 percent saying their national media is credible, and Jordan among the lowest, at just 38 percent - down from 66 percent in 2013); At the same time, the belief that international news organizations are biased against the Arab World has grown. An average of 37 percent of Arab nationals thinks this." (https://www.qatar.northwestern.edu/news/articles/2018/05-mideast-media-retrospective.html)
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"Publics around the world overwhelmingly agree that the news media should be unbiased in their coverage of political issues, according to a new Pew Research Center survey of 38 countries. Yet, when asked how their news media are doing on reporting different political issues fairly, people are far mo
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re mixed in their sentiments, with many saying their media do not deliver. And, in many countries, there are sharp political differences in views of the media – with the largest gap among Americans. To build off Pew Research Center’s earlier findings about U.S. news media habits and attitudes, this new cross-national survey begins to study these dynamics globally. The survey finds that a median of 75% across 38 countries say it is never acceptable for a news organization to favor one political party over others when reporting the news. Just 20% say this is sometimes okay. People in Europe show the greatest opposition to political bias in their news." (Page 3)
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"The seemingly buzzing Lebanese media market is, in fact, controlled by only a few highly politicized owners that are either directly affiliated with political parties or belong to Lebanese dynasties. Additional threats to media pluralism arise from clear editorial lines defined by politics, close t
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ies among the dynasties, and a number of regulatory shortcomings." (http://www.mom-rsf.org/en/countries/Lebanon)
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"This rapid review synthesises data from academic, policy and NGO sources on the role media can play in creating/easing tensions between refugees and the host community, and within the host community itself. Acknowledging the importance media can play in perceptions, and considering the confessional
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and political nature of the media, the review also maps the media/social media in Lebanon and highlights some successes in utilising media to ease tensions. Key findings are as follows: Due to the Lebanese media being party-controlled or linked it has a political message and focuses on one confessional group, therefore it is often negative towards refugees and Lebanese citizens from other confessions, thus creating tensions. In a survey carried out in 2016 by UNHCR 29% of the Lebanese respondents highlighted that media has a strong impact on the perception of refugees. More than two thirds of the respondents acknowledged that discussions in the media trigger reactions against refugees, and that the Lebanese media reports negative stories about refugees (Alsharabati, 2017: 15-16). In a discourse analysis of Lebanese media conducted in February 2015, topics that can be perceived as viewing refugees in a negative light formed the majority of the reporting and also often had a negative tone. However, humanitarian stories about refugees were also reported, often in a positive tone (Sakada et al., 2015). In 2013 a UNDP-led pact, entitled "Journalists' Pact for Strengthening Civil Peace in Lebanon", was signed by 34 media institutions. The idea behind the pact was to create more ethics in Lebanese journalism, enhance neutrality, depoliticise reporting, increase accuracy, and create responsibility for reporting." (Overview, page 2)
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"There are 372 online media websites registered with the National Media Council; some are non-operational, while others use very basic design and graphics. They are also similar to existing media companies in terms of adopting a traditional economic, administrative and editorial model. In fact, ther
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e are not many media startups in Lebanon. These companies face major challenges, including inability to generate revenue, the type of content, and thus the number of readers, innovation on offer and companies interested in advertising on these media platforms. The most prominent media startups in Lebanon are ArabNet, Step Feed and Diwanee. There are also media companies taking their first steps in this field, such as Megafon, Figur-it, Daraj and Labneh&Facts." (Page 6)
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"This report looks at media practices and regulatory tools that are available to address hate speech and racism in the media, with a focus on eight countries, namely Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Morocco, Palestine and Tunisia. The first part looks at regulatory approaches to addressing these pro
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blems. It, in turn, is broken down into two main sections, one looking at legal regimes, including systems of media regulation, and the second looking at self-regulatory practices in the media and how they deal with racist speech. The second part outlines international standards in this area and, based on these and the legal frameworks and experiences in the region, offers a set of recommendations for better practice directions in this area." (Executive summary, page 3)
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"In spite of harsh censorship, conservative morals and a lack of investment, women documentarists in the Arab world have found ways to subtly negotiate dissidence in their films, something that is becoming more apparent since the ‘Arab Revolutions’. In this book, Stefanie Van de Peer traces the
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very beginnings of Arab women making documentaries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), from the 1970s and 1980s in Egypt and Lebanon, to the 1990s and 2000s in Morocco and Syria." (Publisher description)
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"Governments around the world have dramatically increased their efforts to manipulate information on social media over the past year. The Chinese and Russian regimes pioneered the use of surreptitious methods to distort online discussions and suppress dissent more than a decade ago, but the practice
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has since gone global. Such state-led interventions present a major threat to the notion of the internet as a liberating technology. Online content manipulation contributed to a seventh consecutive year of overall decline in internet freedom, along with a rise in disruptions to mobile internet service and increases in physical and technical attacks on human rights defenders and independent media. Nearly half of the 65 countries assessed in Freedom on the Net 2017 experienced declines during the coverage period, while just 13 made gains, most of them minor. Less than one-quarter of users reside in countries where the internet is designated Free, meaning there are no major obstacles to access, onerous restrictions on content, or serious violations of user rights in the form of unchecked surveillance or unjust repercussions for legitimate speech." (Page 1)
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"This preliminary technical report examines the relationship between media uses of Lebanese youth and their potential attraction to extremism—broadly conceived. The study focuses on school students aged 14 to 18 and their teachers. It is based on 16 focus groups distributed across the country and
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covers a total of 80 students and 80 teachers. To research youth’s media uses and their understanding of media and digital literacy, the study examines their use of various media tools: traditional and digital media, as well as social media, games, and smartphones. The qualitative study reveals various types of extremist inclinations among youth, including religious/sectarian, political, familial/tribal, and racial extremism. Some patterns of extremism may be linked to students’ uses of the Internet and social media, as a catalyst or trigger for action. The widespread use of chatting applications shows a potential risk for connection with extremist groups, while the use of violent video games demonstrates a potential link to students’ violent reactions in their communities, as the examples in the report show. Consistently, participating students are especially drawn to violent, horror and action films. The study also reveals that students are less interested in watching television, which has declined in favor of new media platforms. When it comes to policies regarding media uses that aim to protect students from extremism, few schools have them, yet all except one school teacher expressed concerns about their students receiving media messages that incite violent behavior and lead to recruitment by extremist groups. The teachers expressed fear that their students may be potentially encouraged through new media to engage in risky and violent acts, including extremism, terrorism, early sexual behavior, and drug abuse. Despite this fear, findings show that extremism among the young students was the most limited in schools where clear policies regulate media uses, curricula include some digital and media literacy instruction, and teachers follow up with students when they detect signs of extremist behaviors." (Abstract)
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"Journalists from 17 countries, mostly around the Mediterranean, have examined the quality of media coverage within their respective national contexts. They highlight examples of good work marked by careful, sensitive and humanitarian reporting and also expose the shortcomings as well as the darker
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side of media driven by political bias, hate speech and opportunism. The conclusions from many different parts of the Mediterranean are similar; there are inspirational examples of journalism at its best – stylish, resourceful, and painstaking – and equally powerful instances of media stereotyping and social exclusion. But everywhere the study paints a picture of journalists and journalism under pressure: of under-resourced media unable to provide the time and money needed to tell the story in context; of poorly trained journalists uninformed about the complex nature of the migration narrative; of newsrooms vulnerable to pressure and manipulation by voices of hate, whether from political elites or social networks. The influence of social media cannot be underestimated in an age when many, if not most, consumers get their information firstly from social networks and through their mobile devices. The publisher is more likely to be a major internet company, such as Facebook, which requires fresh thinking on how to promote core standards of journalism in covering migration on all platforms." (Executive summary)
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