UC Irvine

ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION

Mediating Lebanon: Sensemaking and Competing Articulationsby Muneira Hoballah Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology University of California, Irvine, 2024 Distinguished Professor, David Theo Goldberg, Chair

This dissertation investigates the relationship between mass media, reality, and sense-making in a media-saturated Lebanon. My methods involve textual analysis with reference to ethnographic fieldwork that spanned the period between 2017 through 2019 protests, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the 2020 Beirut Port Explosion. Through a critical analysis of media-related practices and performances surrounding four 'critical media events,' I examine mass and socially mediated presentations not as representations of reality but as co-constitutive of performative practices. These include the 2017 resignation of Prime Minister Saad Hariri, the false espionage accusation of actor Ziad Itani, the 2019 October Revolution protests, and the 2020 Beirut Port explosion. By examining commentary from journalists, experts, and other privileged enunciators around these events, I investigate the performative and constitutive role of mass-mediated utterances in everyday life. This approach critically examines the conditions under which narratives are produced, circulated, and interpreted, what is shown and what is seen, in a context of pervasive ambiguity and uncertainty, and how they shape realities. Chapter 1 discusses Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri's sudden resignation in November 2017, delivered from Riyadh. I look at how mass-mediated commentary and media-related practices shape and are shaped by personal and geopolitical 'relational sovereignties.’ Chapter 2 examines actor Ziad Itani's false espionage accusation, highlighting state security and media collaboration in creating a simulated reality. Chapter 3 focuses on the 17 October 2019 uprising, analyzing the role of experts, academics, and other cultural producers in imagining the protests and the people. The final chapter explores the Beirut port explosion, showing how corruption and crisis narratives pre-articulated the event. The explosion became a critical media event where leaks, gossip and rumor were deemed necessary for making sense of non-explanations. Throughout the dissertation, I demonstrate how the narratives put forth to explain these different events signal a breakdown of political authority where ambiguity and non-explanation for big and small violences alike have become commonplace. In conclusion, I extend this analysis by drawing on David Theo Goldberg's (2021) concept of dread as a possible “structure of feeling” amid the persistent inability to make sense of ‘critical media events.’