Hybrid Media and Hybrid Politics: Contesting Informational Uncertainty in Lebanon and Tunisia
This paper investigates the dynamic relationship between hybrid media and hybrid politics in Lebanon and Tunisia. While previous research on the media in hybrid regimes has mainly focused on regime strategies of restricting and manipulating public debate, our analysis moves beyond repression. We argue that the ambiguities of hybrid politics, which combines democratic and authoritarian elements, not only constrain independent and critical reporting but also open up opportunities for journalistic agencies. We draw on Schedler’s concept of informational uncertainty to capture the epistemological instability of hybrid regimes and the strategies of political actors to control public knowledge. Distinguishing between three dimensions of media hybridity - economic, cultural and technological - we show how the new hybrid media environment significantly increases the volatility of hybrid politics and informational uncertainty for political actors. Our empirical analysis is based on seventy-one semistructured interviews with journalists in Lebanon and Tunisia conducted between 2016 and 2019. The material reveals a broad range of strategies used by journalists who employ the internal contradictions of hybrid politics to pursue their own agenda. The comparison between Lebanon and Tunisia also highlights contextual conditions that enable, or limit, journalistic agency, such as clientelistic dependencies, economic resources, and civil society alliances.
Journalism under instrumentalized political parallelism
Media systems where political parallelism co-exists with political clientelism have contradictory influences on journalistic practices. Journalists are encouraged to actively defend a cause and influence public opinion while expected to remain subservient to their political masters. The media studies literature has analyzed the impact of political parallelism and clientelism separately, without reflecting on the tensions that emerge when they operate together. The article examines journalism under instrumentalized political parallelism and argues that it plays out in a field defined by both horizontal and vertical conflicts. We add an elite-grassroots analytical perspective to the inter-elite tensions associated with a polarized public sphere. Political parallelism in non-democratic contexts seemingly leaves little room for journalistic agency, as the politically powerful tend to instrumentalize media outlets. However, by looking closely at the case of Lebanon, we argue that journalists are still able to act independently of and contrary to the elite's intentions. The empirical analysis shows how journalists navigate vis-à-vis the politicians by playing the relations game, exploiting internal contradictions in the system and connecting with popular grievances. The article contributes new knowledge about journalists’ resilience to instrumentalization in a context of media/politics connections that is commonly found outside the West.
How does climate change affect peace and security in South Sudan?
How does climate change affect peace and security in South Sudan?
The impact of climate change on peace and security in Somalia
A new collaborative NUPI-SIPRI project examines how climate change affect peace and security in states and regions on the UN Security Council's agenda. On 4 February, the project launched its first fact sheet, looking into Somalia.
NUPI awarded funding for five research projects by the Research Council of Norway
The Research Council of Norway awarded NUPI funding for five new research projects.
NUPI replaces NRK P2's 'Ekko' this week
NUPI has produced ten hours of high quality radio about foreign policy and international relations. The programs will air on NRK P2 during week 50, Monday to Friday from 9.00 to 11.00. Tune in!
Governance, fragility and insurgency in the Sahel: a hybrid order in the making
Once a region that rarely featured in debates about global security, the Sahel has become increasingly topical as it confronts the international community with intertwined challenges related to climate variability, poverty, food insecurity, population displacement, transnational crime, contested statehood and jihadist insurgencies. This Special Issue discerns the contours of political orders in the making. After situating the Sahel region in time and space, we focus on the trajectory of regional security dynamics over the past decade, which are marked by two military coups in Mali (2012 and 2020). In addressing state fragility and societal resilience in the context of increasing external intervention and growing international rivalry, we seek to consider broader and deeper transformations that can be neither ignored nor patched up through the framework of the ‘war on terror’ projected onto ‘ungoverned spaces’. Focusing especially on the mobilisation of material and immaterial resources, we apply political economy lenses in combination with a historical sociological approach to shed light on how extra-legal governance plays a crucial role in the deformation, transformation and reformation of political orders.
“Irregular” Migration and Divergent Understandings of Security in the Sahel
On 23 September 2020, the EU launched its new Pact on Migration and Asylum. In a refreshingly blunt press-release accompanying the Pact one could read: “The current system no longer works. And for the past five years, the EU has not been able to fix it”. The stated aim of the Pact is a fairer sharing of responsibility and solidarity between member states while providing certainty for individual asylum applicants. This is intended to rebuild trust between EU members as well as improve the capacity to better manage migration. However, whether the Pact will be implemented and have an effect on EU external migration policy in the Sahel remains to be seen. Following the 2012 crisis in Mali and further spread of instability to neighbouring Niger and Burkina Faso, the central areas of the Sahel region have gained prominence as “producers” of transnational security threats, such as violent extremism, “irregular” migration and human trafficking. With Niger also being a major transit hub for northbound “irregular” migrants, this trend was further exacerbated by the so-called European refugee and migration crisis in 2015. This has led to unprecedented international attention in recent years, and consequently, a growing number of bilateral and multilateral donor assistance programmes and external military interventions. Since 2015, the number of refugees and asylum seekers coming from this area to Europe has been reduced. At first glance, this could mistakenly be understood as a success-story in migration management, or alternatively, that fewer people want to travel the dangerous route across the Mediterranean. However, the situation on the ground is going from bad to worse, despite increased levels of international resources invested to foster stabilisation and development in the region. Why? This IAI Commentary is based on the authors’ forthcoming journal article: “The Fragility Dilemma and Divergent Security Complexes in the Sahel”, in The International Spectator, Vol. 55, No. 4 (December 2020).
Fixers and friends: local and international researchers
While we live in a highly unequal world where your position and place will determine what you have access to. However, based on years of fieldwork in the Sahel, this chapter turns this question around, exploring if it is possible to make inequaity work for mutual benefit. The answer is a modestly yes, and the chapter suggest if not a code of conduct, at least some personal principles of fieldwork that have come to guide my way of doing fieldwork, of making inequality work for mutual benefit.
The External Dimension of EU Migration Management: The Role of Aid
Aid is seen as a key EU instrument in addressing the root causes of migration, but it has not been decisive for the drastic reduction of irregular arrivals in Europe in recent years. Nevertheless, development assistance has become crucial leverage for the EU in persuading major transit countries to improve their border control. Although this “externalisation” of EU border management seems like a successful approach for now, it is not sustainable in the long term. The Union still needs to find better synergy between migration management and development policy that is not designed to stop migration but to manage and regulate it in a more mutually beneficial way.