The (Un)Civil War Media Framing and Memory Construction in Wartime and Postwar Lebanon A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the Department of Political and Social Sciences, the Institute for Media and Communication Studies of the Freie Universität Berlin by Amal Dib, M.A. Berlin, 2019 Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Carola Richter Second examiner: Prof. Marwan Kraidy, PhD Date of defense: August 20, 2019 iii TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS .................................................................................................... v LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................ viii LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................................................ ix LIST OF ACRONYMS ....................................................................................................... x NOTE ON TRANSLATION AND TRANSLITERATION ............................................ xi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................. xiii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................ 1 1.1 Problem Definition ........................................................................................................ 2 1.2 Current State of Research .............................................................................................. 4 1.3 Structure of the Study .................................................................................................... 7 CHAPTER 2 LEBANON AND THE WAR: A BACKGROUND .................................. 9 2.1 A Prelude to War: A Historical Overview of Prewar Lebanon ................................... 11 2.2 The War: Scenarios of Chaos ...................................................................................... 17 2.2.1 The warring fronts .................................................................................................. 18 2.2.1.1 Internal actors and political parties .................................................................... 19 2.2.1.2 Regional and international actors....................................................................... 21 2.2.2 On April 13th, 1975 ................................................................................................. 22 2.2.3 Chronology of the war ............................................................................................ 24 2.2.3.1 The first phase: The Two Years’ war (1975-1976) ........................................... 26 2.2.3.2 The second phase: The Syrian involvement (1978-1982) ................................. 26 2.2.3.3 The third phase: The Israeli invasion (1982-1984) ............................................ 27 2.2.3.4 The fourth phase: The internal wars (1984-1990) ............................................. 28 2.2.4 The Ta’if Agreement and the ‘end’ of the war ....................................................... 28 2.3 The Postwar: A Fragile Peace...................................................................................... 31 2.3.1 2000: The end of the Israeli occupation .................................................................. 32 2.3.2 2005: Pax Syriana, Hariri assassination and the Syrian withdrawal ...................... 32 2.3.3 Post 2005: In search of sovereignty ........................................................................ 34 2.4 The Media in Lebanon: Overview of a Fragmented Sphere........................................ 36 2.4.1 The press scene in Lebanon .................................................................................... 39 2.4.1.1 The two pillars of the Lebanese press: An-Nahar and As-Safir ......................... 42 2.5 Concluding Remarks ................................................................................................... 45 v CHAPTER 3 MEMORY AS A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ............................. 47 3.1 On Collective Memory ................................................................................................ 47 3.1.1 On memory and identity ......................................................................................... 54 3.1.2 On memory and war ............................................................................................... 56 3.2 On Media and Memory ................................................................................................ 59 3.2.1 The media as agents of memory ............................................................................. 59 3.2.2 Public intellectuals as agents of memory ................................................................ 68 3.3 Research Questions ...................................................................................................... 71 CHAPTER 4 FRAMING ANALYSIS: METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK AND MIXED-METHODS APPROACH .................................................................................. 75 4.1 Framing Analysis as a Methodological Framework .................................................... 75 4.2 Research Design: The Mixed-Method Approach ........................................................ 82 4.2.1 Quantitative content analysis .................................................................................. 84 4.2.1.1 Selection of data ................................................................................................. 89 4.2.1.2 Codebook and coding ........................................................................................ 90 4.2.1.3 Validity and reliability ....................................................................................... 96 4.2.1.4 Principle component analysis ............................................................................ 96 4.2.2 Qualitative textual analysis ..................................................................................... 97 CHAPTER 5 MEDIA APPROACHES TO THE DISCOURSE OF THE WAR IN WARTIME AND POSTWAR ........................................................................................ 103 5.1 Wartime Discourse: An-Nahar’s Editorial Approach and As-Safir’s Op-ed Approach ......................................................................................................................................... 104 5.2 Postwar Discourse: The Op-ed Angle ....................................................................... 107 5.3 Discourse Across Time: “Let the War End” vs. “Let’s Discuss the War” ................ 109 5.4 April 13th in the Press: First Day of ‘War’ ................................................................ 113 5.5 Discussion .................................................................................................................. 116 CHAPTER 6 FRAMES OF WAR: MEDIA AS A BATTLEFIELD .......................... 121 6.1 An-Nahar Wartime Frames: A War Bigger than Lebanon ........................................ 122 6.2 As-Safir Wartime Frames: A Conspiracy Against the Palestinians ........................... 125 6.3 An-Nahar Postwar Frames: A Complex Civil War ................................................... 128 6.4 As-Safir Postwar Frames: Lebanon, a Fertile Ground for Wars ................................ 130 6.5 Discussion .................................................................................................................. 132 CHAPTER 7 THE FRAGMENTED MEMORY: INSIGHTS ON THE MEDIA AND INTELLECTUALS’ WAR DISCOURSE ..................................................................... 139 7.1 The Civil War Frame ................................................................................................. 141 7.2 The Regional War frame ........................................................................................... 149 vi 7.3 The Proxy War Frame ............................................................................................... 152 7.4 The Complex Regional and Proxy War Frame.......................................................... 155 7.5 The Civil and Regional War Frame ........................................................................... 158 7.6 The Complex Civil, Regional, and Proxy War Frame............................................... 169 7.7 Discussion .................................................................................................................. 173 CHAPTER 8 CONCLUSION......................................................................................... 181 8.1 Theoretical Implications ............................................................................................ 182 8.2 Challenges and Limitations ....................................................................................... 186 8.3 Areas for Future Research ......................................................................................... 187 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................ 191 APPENDIX I Zusammenfassung der Ergebnisse / Summary of the Results ........... 211 APPENDIX II Codebook ................................................................................................ 217 APPENDIX III Author Resume ..................................................................................... 223 vii LIST OF TABLES Table 4.1: Frame Elements as Variables ............................................................................