The military media of ‘The Islamic Resistance’ - the military arm of Hezbollah: History, messages, and objectives

In the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Islamic Resistance, the military arm of Hezbollah, was an early guerrilla movement, which established a military media unit in 1984. This unit developed its work to specialise in the following procedures: issuing statements about the activities of Islamic Resistance and its fighters' obituaries; filming the military operations initiated by Islamic Resistance against the Israeli army in Southern Lebanon; and, producing videos of fighters' testaments, video songs and flashes. This unit uses the official website of Islamic Resistance and cooperates with media outlets established and operated by Hezbollah, particularly Al-Manar satellite station, to transmit its messages. However, the success of this unit has demonstrated, particularly the significance of media units, to the Palestinian military arms in the Gaza Strip in the context of psychological warfare against Israel, as shown in the recent war with Israel in 2014. The establishment of media units by military arms of many militant organisations in the Middle East has promoted new forms of discourse. These forms, when accompanied with developments in communication technologies, have allowed the military arms to develop their media platforms by which they freely convey their discourse; the latter forms are embedded with signs and frames, and have objectives aimed at a wider audience. This thesis identifies and analyses the media discourse of Hezbollah's military arm, contextualised by reviewing the use of media by militant organisations in the Middle East and the spawning of military media units. The point of departure in this thesis resides in identifying the media discourse of Islamic Resistance. Thus, the thesis critically reviews the current literature and the organisational structure of Hezbollah; in doing so, it reaches the conclusion that such media discourse is comprised of the output of the military media unit and the speeches of Resistance of Hezbollah's Secretary-General, who is also the leader of its military arm. In contrast to previous studies, the present review explores that the establishment of Hezbollah's military arm, Islamic Resistance, is likely to have occurred before that of its parent organisation. This thesis bridges the gaps in the studies existing in the literature, which have never identified the media discourse of Islamic Resistance, nor analysed the total output of the military media unit of Islamic Resistance. Thus, there is a dearth of studies relating to the following outputs: the written statements, fighters' testaments, video songs and flashes, and the footage of the capturing of Israeli soldiers. However, this thesis analyses the media discourse of Islamic Resistance. It analyses samples of archival data representing the total output of the military media unit, as well as the speeches of Resistance of Hezbollah's Secretary-General, Sayyed Hassan Nasrullah. Under its aim and sub-aims, it explores the embedded signs, codes, frames and objectives of the discourse. To achieve its aim, this thesis has developed a critical discourse analysis (CDA) model, utilising tools from the fields of (critical) linguistics and (social) semiotics, and guided by framing theory. The findings of this thesis bridge a gap in the current studies relating to the media discourse of Islamic Resistance. In addition, the theoretical foundations and the approach utilised here can be replicated in future studies of the media discourses of other guerrilla groups in the Middle East, particularly the Palestinian military arms.