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Filming resistance: A Hezbollah strategy

Set within the wider project of analysing Hezbollah's strategies of self-representation in times of crisis, “Filming resistance” focuses on the group’s video clips in the wake of the 2006 war with Israel as one of the key media texts that constitute their narrative of resistance. This paper presents an in depth analysis of resistance as a growing identity in the Arab and Muslim world which defies the dominant representation of Islam as synonym to extremism or terrorism.

I published this paper while I was still a PhD student in Paris, and the core of my work revolved around offering a broader yet more solid understanding of Arab militant and resistant discourses. Ultimately, I believed such an approach would contribute to unpicking the complexity of the notion of political Islam, especially the politics of its representation by Western media. As I’ve recently joined the Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research, I’m now focusing my work on the relationship between media literacy and social change in the MENA region, leading our research projects on this subject and collaborating with US technology company Meedan, along with a number of regional partners. The knowledge I was able to build through my work on Hezbollah media strategies and on how they represented a shift from the pan-Arab revolutionary narratives of the fifties and the sixties is today my biggest asset to better understand the complexities of the social and political turmoil the Arab region is now facing.