Citizen vs mainstream journalism : the clash between the Lebanese forces and the popular block on the elections in Zahle

Abstract

This research presents a study and a closer insight on the practice of citizen journalism and its effects on the profession in Lebanon. On Sunday May 6th 2018, a large dispute took place between two political parties running for the elections in Zahle- Lebanon: runner for the Popular Block, Mrs. Myriam Skaff and the Lebanese Forces. What triggers this study is the fact that the dispute was recorded by citizens while traditional media were absent. The videos were spread across social media, and afterwards, the Lebanese media interpreted the incident. The aim of this study is to stress on the role of citizen journalism in today‟s media landscape. The outline of this paper will include an introduction which covers an overview about the incident that happened between the two political parties, along with a definition of citizen journalism, a literature review about current studies, a theoretical framework which involves an understanding of the theory studied and its concepts. In this study, the framing theory is used to investigate the visuals found in the reporting of the dispute between the political parties and the public sphere theory helps to examine how media can influence and shape citizen‟s opinions. This study uses a qualitative research method of in-depth interviews to obtain more focused explanations on what mainstream journalists think of citizen journalism and a discourse analysis to shed lights on how each Lebanese television station framed the event. It was found that citizen journalism threatens mainstream journalism since it does not respect its ethical norms and journalists are finding it hard and rich at the same time to cope with the challenges posed by this new concept of journalism.