Framing Victims or Villains? Investigating Bias Towards Palestinians In Lebanese Media
LAU Beirut Campus - Nicol Hall 406 & Online via Webex
The LAU School of Arts and Sciences invites you to the talk event
Framing Victims or Villains? Investigating Bias Towards Palestinians In Lebanese Media
as part of its Research Seminar Series
About the speakers
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Dr. Gretchen King
Assistant Professor of Communication and Multimedia Journalism
Maysaa Ajjan
Christine Cavalcanti
Despina Damianidou
MA Students in Multimedia Journalism
About the event
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Palestinians in Lebanon, most of whom are refugees, suffer from systemic racism in Lebanese society. This study examines whether this racism – or anti-Palestinian bias – manifests in Lebanese media and to what extent. Two methods of quantitative and qualitative coding were respectively employed: sentiment analysis of headlines and Media Framing Analysis (MFA). For the headline sentiment analysis, 442 headlines were coded for bias out of which nine articles were then purposively selected for the MFA.
Findings show that anti-Palestinian bias is, indeed, present in Lebanese media. Some media are positive while others are negative, illustrating that media in Lebanon offer contradicting biases when it comes to depicting Palestinians. Findings also reveal a number of discoveries, such as the relationship between the bias detected and the political economy of media in Lebanon among others.
This research was conducted during the Fall of 2022 as part of the course JSC 488K-688C/COM 488U: Media and Palestine and is being prepared for submission to Media, War, & Conflict (a SAGE journal).