After receiving both her BA and MA in Mass Media and Mass Communication with Distinction, respectively in 2008 and 2011, along with a Minor in Political Science and International Affairs from the University of Balamand Lebanon, Amal was granted an Erasmus Mundus scholarship to pursue her PhD at Freie Universität. Under the supervision of Prof. Carola Richter, she is working on her thesis titled: “Is the war really over? A comparative study of the media discourse in war and post-war Lebanon.

Thesis: The Un(Civil) War. Media Framing and Memory Construction in Wartime and Postwar Lebanon

ABSTRACT

The civil war in Lebanon (1975-1990) is a very controversial point in the modern history of the country for various reasons. The memory related to this war is tormented between the various actors, as each party, religious sect, area has its own history, in the absence of one public or collective memory and discourse. In times of war the media played a fundamental role not only in transferring the news of the events, but in shaping the public opinion, and drafting history and its memory. The media discourse during the war was violent, negative, discriminatory and full of war-related lexicon. However, little research has been done to track the post-war media discourse. The aim behind Amal’s research is to investigate if and how the discourse has changed from war to post-war period in an attempt to better understand the political situation in Lebanon swinging between “war” and “peace”. The study, through applying different methodological approaches, will examine how the media discourse established during the war might still be present in the post-war period, and how does that affect the continuity of the war, at least on the discourse level.