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Kristin Shamas View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by SHAREOK repository UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA GRADUATE COLLEGE LEBANESE SUBJECTIVITIES AND MEDIA USE: POST/GLOBAL CONTEXTS A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY By KRISTIN A. SHAMAS Norman, Oklahoma 2011 LEBANESE SUBJECTIVITIES AND MEDIA USE: POST/GLOBAL CONTEXTS A DISSERTATION APPROVED FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF COMMUNICATION BY Dr. Clemencia Rodriguez, Chair Dr. Ryan Bisel Dr. Lisa Foster Dr. Sandie Holguin Dr. Joshua Landis Dr. Todd Sandel Copyright by KRISTIN A. SHAMAS 2011 All Rights Reserved. Acknowledgements Colleagues, students, family, and friends, you have shaped my work and me in multiple ways during this process. Thank you. Certainly if you shared your stories, writing, or perspectives about Lebanon and/or communication with me, I owe you many times over. More specifically, thank you to my husband, my parents, and my sister and brother and your families. You rattled me with your “when will you finish?” questions and then you gave me the encouragement, support, and space to get it done. Thank you to my brother Mark, whose life and death motivate everything I do. I would rather have you here, but you’re not, so I do the best with that that I can. Thank you to my nephew Jaden for being my superhero during the years of Ph.D. study. A day with you was like twenty spring breaks. And most recently, thank you to my son, Deacon. I hate every day I spend away from you writing. But because of you—the example I hope to set and the world I want to leave you—I write. Thank you to my extended family, including my mother’s sister and my husband’s parents, for your constant encouragement. Importantly, thank you to those who made Lebanon and “the situation” of 2007 and early 2008 more bearable. Your friendships were bright spots in a tumultuous time. Thank you J. for so many times venturing to the south with me, and for explaining the heart and passion of citizen journalism. Thank you to the many young Lebanese who described and iv demonstrated to me the power and hope of a new generation in global politics. Thank you to Dr. Cecil Hourani for inspiring richer understandings of the Eastern Mediterranean in terms of people, culture, history, and the material ways in which these forces demonstrate themselves. Thank you to friends and family in Oklahoma, Beirut, and southern Lebanon who have always explained Lebanon to me. Thank you to Guita Hourani and the Lebanese Emigration Research Center for so much that there’s not room enough to list everything here. To my committee, a very robust thank you. To Dr. Clemencia Rodriguez, my advisor and friend, thank you for your guidance and inspiration. To Dr. Sandie Holguin, thank you for all your encouragement and for the ontological grounding for my work. To Dr. Joshua and Manar Landis, thank you for many years of friendship, knowledge, and advice. To Dr. Todd Sandel and Dr. Lisa Foster, thank you for many insights during my graduate study, exams, prospectus, and dissertation. Dr. Ryan Bisel, thank you for such a close and responsible reading of my dissertation. Thank you to faculty in communication, history, and other various departments whose classes I have taken; each of you contributed significantly to my ability to execute this work. Thank you to Kristi Wright and Angela Castillo for invaluable support. And thank you to Beirut. v Table of Contents I. Introduction 1 II. Theory: Subjectivity, Postglobalization, and Media Use 17 III. Methodology: Media Use and Subjectivity in Fugue 48 IV. Colonial Origins, Subjective Effects: Representations of 82 Syro‐Lebanese in The Oklahoman, 1901‐1958 V. Decolonized Poetics in Alternative Spheres: 122 The Lebanese Civil War Novel VI. Negotiating Traditional Western Journalistic Authority: 173 The Lebanese Blogosphere VII. Conclusions: Repositioning the “Global” through 228 Postglobal Subjectivities and Media Use VIII. Bibliography vi List of Illustrations Figure 1: Map of Lebanon. Courtesy of University of Texas Libraries. 7 Figure 2: Camille Chamoun in 1958 98 Figure 3: Chart from Technorati.com 175 Figure 4: Photo from Monoprix, Achrafiyeh, July 2006 204 vii Abstract Media use is neither socially determined nor socially determinative outside of subjectivity, the process by which the self makes meaning of its place in the world. To further our understandings of media and social change, this dissertation examines the relationship between Lebanese media use and subjectivities in different times and geographic locations, including within the Lebanese diaspora. It incorporates three case studies, including textual analyses of 1) representations of Syro‐Lebanese Oklahoman immigrants in The Oklahoman from 1901 to 1958; 2) discourses on media and communication in the contemporary Lebanese civil war novel; and 3) constructions of journalistic authority within the Lebanese blogosphere during the 2006 Summer Israeli‐Hizballah war. Through these case studies, this dissertation investigates how global power is constructed/perpetuated/resisted via existing communication channels and patterns of relating that have been created throughout history. viii CHAPTER 1 Dissertation Introduction In dealing with the postcolonial question, Arab cultural studies cannot afford to ignore the latest crucially important terrain of capitalism: cultural production and the relationship between the colonization of communication space and postcolonial identity. Tarik Sabry (2007, 168). A range of discursive and structural authorities bear upon the ways individuals and communities incorporate media into their lives—for instance, through the production and framing of issues related to security and identity, and in the construction of socio‐economic/age/gender dynamics that shape cultural decodings and modes of use of new technologies. Conversely, individuals use media to shape these social forces. From this view, media use is neither socially determined nor socially determinative outside of its relationship with subjectivity, the process by which the self makes meaning of its place in the world (Jackson 2002). The very concept of “new media” highlights how meanings and uses of media‐as‐technology shift over time. Signified in relation to fluid notions of “progress,” technology is constructed through and constructive of ideologies and power at specific historical junctures (Murphy and Potts 2003). Therefore the relationships between people and media are complex and highly contextual. Nevertheless, the field of media studies suffers a “drastically foreshortened historical perspective” (Morley 2007, 3). Positioning new media as “the magical dreams of the era of technomodernity,” media studies scholars frequently assume a distinct break between a more “modern” present and “traditional” ways of the 1 past, particularly between eras of analogue and digital media (2). Currently, an array of popular discourses within global journalism and politics position media as determinative of Arab publics. This determinism takes both dystopic and utopic forms; new media can foster jihad or lead Arabs to democratic revolution, depending on the particular social processes or practices being explained as a “current event.” To help correct this ontological bias, investigations of new media must start to “chart the path” of the “tidal wave” of media use rather than merely investigating its current “froth at the crest” (Lister, Dovey, Giddings, Grant and Kelly 2009, 3). Otherwise the field of media studies risks overemphasizing technological determinism—the idea of technology as the driving force behind social change—without basis. With this dissertation, I help “chart the path” of media and social change by contributing a description of Lebanese media use and subjectivities in different times and geographic locations. Through an examination of situations of media use among Lebanese in Lebanon and within the Lebanese diaspora, I highlight the embeddedness of media within a world capitalist system that originated in histories of colonialism. Yet I also emphasize how Lebanese use media as instruments of material and discursive power. I look at the relationship between media and processes of subjectivity construction, negotiation, and maintenance. I argue that media, the situations enabling/constraining their access, and the ways in which humans use them must be positioned within broad spheres of historic, economic, and political relations. I demonstrate these contingencies through a 2 focus on how communication practices shape and are shaped by processes we label as “globalization.” A lack of research and theoretical connections between fields of media studies and globalization studies has rendered our understanding of the connection between media and globalization as “vague and unspecified” (Rantanen 2005, 4). Additionally, such paucity of disciplinary connections leaves media and international communication scholars underrepresented in empirical and theoretical discussions regarding globalization (Kraidy 2005; Rantanen 2005). Finally, postcolonial theorists decry the “belatedness” of globalization theory to conversations on identity politics and representation (Loomba, Kaul, Bunzel, Burton and Esty, 2005). To help fill these lacunae, this dissertation moves between Lebanon and the United States to explore relationships between media and people in constructing global and local realities. Although postcolonial, postmodern, and feminist
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