The ideological evolution of Hezbollah and its impact on Middle Eastern media (2000-2022): a corpus-assisted, summative, intertextual and sociocognitive study

Abstract

In order to understand Hezbollah's ideology, it is important to examine its ideological evolution and its impact on Middle Eastern regional landscapes and media. In fact, Hezbollah's ideological shifts began with its foundation between 1982 and 1985, its political inclusion in 1992, and its sectarian shift since 2013. However, this evolution has not been thoroughly examined. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate the extent to which Hezbollah's ideology has evolved since 2013 and how Hezbollah's ideological evolution has impacted Middle Eastern media. Data were collected from political discourse (469 speeches by Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, from 2000-2022) and media discourse (1,440 news articles from Alarabiya, Aljazeera, Albawaba, and Alakhbar, totalling approximately a million words). In order to better understand the ideological evolution of politically-oriented Islamic movements such as Hezbollah and its impact on regional media landscapes, this study requires an interdisciplinary approach that takes into account the related cultural, historical, political, and social contexts. So, a mixed-method design combining quantitative and qualitative approaches was employed. Quantitatively, corpora were constructed using a corpus linguistic tool (Voyant Tools) to identify significant patterns and obtain representative samples for manual analysis. Qualitatively, summative content analysis (SCA) and intertextual analysis from critical discourse analysis (CDA) were used for the political discourse to investigate the contextual usage of a set of terms frequently used over time. This study also incorporates SCA with intertextuality to examine the evolution of, taking into account its broader context. Moreover, sociocognitive theory was adopted for the analysis of media discourse to identify the attitudes that media outlets had in common over time. The findings showed that Hezbollah leader's discourse has significantly evolved to become explicit sectarianism, although there is evidence to suggest that sectarianism was implied in his discourse prior to 2013, contrary to the findings of many other studies. This also suggests that Hezbollah prior to 2013 was intrinsically sectarian, although the ideology had yet to be transformed into obvious sectarianism. In addition, the findings revealed that Hezbollah's ideological evolution into sectarianism has significantly impacted the news media which presented it in a negative light owing to Hezbollah's sectarian involvement in the Syrian Civil War in 2013. However, between 2000 and 2012, the media usually depicted Hezbollah favourably, promoting its cause. The findings have significant implications for the perception of the Hezbollah leader’s strategic use of discourse, regional counterterrorism initiatives, and further research on the influence of Hezbollah's ideological changes on different regional contexts.

Date of Thesis submission	2024
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Western Sydney University
Supervisor	Chong Han (Supervisor) & Ray Archee (Supervisor)