Case Study No.1: The Legal Action Against Journalist Mohammad Nimr

On a monthly basis, the Samir Kassir Foundation (SKF) will be selecting one case of violations against freedom of the press in Lebanon and analyzing the reaction to it on its own social media accounts. This exercise will allow us to understand the reaction of our own social media audience to our reporting and assess the general perception of violations against freedom of the press in Lebanon.

Our study focuses on a framework that investigates the position towards the victim of the violation, the presence of hate speech, the visible political affiliation of audience member, in addition to exploring a gender perspective, when available.

For the March 2022 case study, SKF chose the case of journalist Mohammad Nimr being summoned by the Criminal Investigation Department based on a report from the Presidency of the Republic, to emphasize that the journalists should only undergo trial in the Publications Court. The story was published on the Facebook account of SKF’s SKeyes Center for Media and Cultural Freedom on March 11. Below are the results:

Out of the 92 analyzed accounts, 72% (66) were against the journalist victim of violation, 20% (18) were supportive of the journalist victim of violation, 8% (7) were neutral, and one account did not display any content.

Out of the 92 analyzed accounts, 72% (35) added comments that contained hate speech, and 28% (57) added comments that did not contain hates speech.

Out of the 92 analyzed accounts, 8% (6) showed affiliations with the Free Patriotic Movement, 1% (1) showed affiliations with the Future Movement, and 91% (85) did not exhibit any visible political affiliation. Out of the FPM leaning accounts, all six people were against the journalist victim of violation. Whereas the Future Movement leaning account was supportive of the journalist.

Out of the 92 analyzed account, 70% (64) were males and 30% (28) were females.

Out of the comments containing hate speech, a majority were posted by males, opposed to the journalist victim of violation.

This report was made possible through support from the UN Democracy Fund.