Pre-defence seminar with Christine Aster Crone
Producing the New Regressive Left:
The case of the Pan-Arab news TV station al-Mayadeen
This study is the first comprehensive research conducted on the Beirut based Pan-Arab TV station al-Mayadeen – an important representative of the post-2011 generation of Arab satellite news media. It draws on a wide variety of programs from the station’s first four years on air. I argue that an analysis of this material traces the development of an ideology that I call – The Regressive Left – a significant development in contemporary Arab political life. Furthermore, it is my hope that this study illustrates how ideology is produced and performed in the contemporary Arab public.
Al-Mayadeen was launched on June 11, 2012 and its establishment is closely linked to the political developments in the Arab world since the uprisings in 2011. More concretely, al-Mayadeen must been understood as a reaction to the editorial line of al-Jazeera in its coverage of the Arab uprisings and not the least to policy behind this editorial line. That there is a strong political ambition behind al-Mayadeen has been clear from the beginning. By relaunching Palestinian as the Arab focal point and by using a strong anti-imperialistic rhetoric, al-Mayadeen represents the classical muqawama [resistance] discourse, which traditionally has been uniting leftist, Arab nationalists and pro-Hizbollah Islamists – in several ways in line with the position of al-Jazeera up until 2011. Yet the evident support for the Syrian regime, the outspoken rejection of Sunni Islamism, and the clear sympathy for Iran and the prioritization of Middle Eastern Christians and other religious minorities place al-Mayadeen in clear opposition to the mainstream pan-Arab news channels based in the Gulf – including, but not limited to al-Jazeera.
Using this news network as a case study, this study demonstrates how, in a mediatized world, a TV station can serve as a forum – or even an agent – for the development of ideological discourses. As I argue throughout this thesis, and as I believe the case of al-Mayadeen illustrates, a TV station is not only a platform for dissemination of already existing political ideology or promotion of existing worldviews, it can equally be a forum where new ideological trends are brought into existence. Or in other words, through the composition of different types of programming conveying different messages, ideological concepts can be rearranged and reinterpreted, together engendering new ideologies. In the present thesis, I investigate:
- HOW ideology at al-Mayadeen is composed/produced through broadcasts practices and aesthetic experiences (To what extend does al-Mayadeen reproduce already existing ideology in its broadcasts and to what extend does it invent/produce it?)
- HOW is a shared cosmos/worldview/logic, where certain political views make sense, created? How are images, music, cultural icons, symbols, themes of discussions, framing, used in order to create this ideological space? MEDIATED IDEOLOGY?
- HOW oppression is reproduced with self-declared differences to earlier (or other contemporary) forms of oppression (Claiming modernity, claiming progressiveness, claiming ownership of civilization) – regressive left
- HOW ideologies form, are manifested, reproduced, develop and decay