Open AccessMEGAPHONE: SOCIAL-MEDIA-NATIVE OUTLETS BETWEEN EDITORIAL INDEPENDENCE AND ALGORITHMIC CONSTRAINTS
Author(s) -
Assil Frayha,
Marwan M. Kraidy
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
selected papers of internet research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2162-3317
DOI - 10.5210/spir.v2021i0.12167
Subject(s) - independence (probability theory) , social media , digital media , context (archaeology) , media studies , politics , social movement , media relations , political science , mass media , interdependence , sociology , public relations , social science , geography , law , statistics , mathematics , archaeology
Though the role of digital media in protest movements has receivedplenty of attention since the onset of Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Uprisings a decadeago, the way that protest movements have enabled the institutional development ofindependent digital news media has received less attention. How do protest movements enablethe rise of independent digital news media? How do these emerging outlets interact withcomponents of pre-existing media? And what techno political constraints do these outletsface? To answer these questions, we zoom in on Lebanon where an uprising broke out in 2019and gave rise to a network of independent and interdependent digital media outlets. We focuson the rise of Megaphone, an independent social-media-native news outlet that left its markon the country’s political and media scene. Based on a politico-economic analysis of theemerging digital media scene in Lebanon, a historical analysis of the distinctive meaning ofmedia independence in that context, and a case study of Megaphone, we examine the notion ofindependent digital media in the context of protest movements and analyze the distinctivetravails of social-media-native outlets. We also show how, in Lebanon, independencemovements, protest movements, and uprisings have historically contributed to introducing newmedia forms and outlets and shaping Lebanon’s media. Our paper contributes to atechno-political and algorithmic notion of media independence and begins to theorizesocial-media-native independent news outlets as a peculiar form of emerging, andincreasingly prevalent, media institution.