In the Eye of the Beholder: The Reception and Perception of a Constructed Other

In the collective memory and historical studies on displacement, these two incidents have nothing to do with each other. However, in the cultural memory of humanity those two men have a lot in common: personal empathy and solidarity that is unchangeable from the 19th until 21st century, from the peaks of the French Alps to the Damascene suburbs.
The aforementioned cases, among many other related stories, are deeply rooted in numerous media representations, which are the proverbial ‘first rough drafts of history’. One wonders what enrages public opinion against refugees today? Why are they portrayed as a threat to national security, a burden to the economy and a reason to fear poverty, crime and disease?
In the past, media portrayals of refugee issues in countries based on rule of law and enjoying a relatively high level of freedom of expression had led to exceptional levels of sympathy for refugees. This was rooted in an appreciation of their clear need for assistance while «fleeing oppressive regimes» or «ethnic and religious or racist violence» and based on international treaties and agreements.
Today, however, and around the world, people seem to look at migration and refugees differently.
In Lebanon, we quite often underestimate the historical layers of tragic events which occurred from the 19th century until the present. Therefore any analysis of media representations should consider the numerous layers of displacement and its effect on the identity formation of Lebanese society, and the media in particular. Even more important is to consider the historical reception, perception and impact of the numerous waves of refugees, who are now residing in Lebanon. Additionally, the internal displacement within the country during the civil war (1975-1990) has not been resolved completely, almost 30 years after it ended. All of this contributed in the construction of a misrepresented «Other» – who does not «look like us» – in media discourse. This same discourse was quite often loaded with biased language and full of latent imagery and meanings, which make us wonder if media shapes this discourse or whether it is merely the result of societal reflection?
The story of the Syrian-Armenian Alber Kuyumjian is a remarkable example of this. During the Lebanese civil war, Kuyumjian’s father hosted his Lebanese-Armenian relatives in his house in Aleppo. Today Alber Kuyumjian is a refugee in Lebanon, living in an apartment with his relatives, as mentioned in an article published in 2015 on the Armenite website with the title Between Anticipation and Misery: The Syrian-Armenian Refugees of Lebanon(1). In the words of Kuyumjian, the reader is clearly able to discover the difficulties and the othering of Armenians coming from Syria to Lebanon. He says: «Maybe they don’t have money now, but we are not asking much. We are being treated as foreigners.»
Though Armenians in Lebanon represent one of the most successful cases of integration, few people realize that Armenians arrived to Lebanon in four unique waves: as of 1915 following the WWI Genocide; the transfer of the Alexandretta (Hatay) Armenians to Anjar in 1939; the influx of Armenians from Palestine during the Nakba in 1948; finally the arrival of Syrian-Armenians primarily from Aleppo during the Syrian crisis. The Palestinians experience, first coming to Lebanon in 1948, is similarly layered. They have remained marginalized and impacted the Lebanese perception of displacement and reception, creating a dominant juxtaposition of the «Good Armenian vs. Bad Palestinian”.
Since 2011, with the influx of the Syrian refugees to Lebanon, these past experiences and loaded media discourse have taken their toll. The many layers of reoccurring displacement and civil war, still impact media coverage. Negative stories, often based on unsubstantiated sources, portraying Syrian refugees as a burden on the economy, abound. According to UN figures, Syrians refugees spend 1.5 billion dollars annually on housing, food, clothing, and other necessities(2). Most of the problems that Lebanon has been facing during the last decade are either the result of official incompetence and a protracted lack of developmental policies on the part of the central government or are caused by the overall crisis in the MENA region and not the direct result of the refugees presence in any specific country. More recently, stories related to criminal and terrorist threats to security, emanating from the informal camps and settlements scattered throughout the country, attempt to paint refugees with a negative brush.
Which images have media coverage left behind? Is media discourse symbolically alienating refugees? What impact do years of layered experience with displacement have? Again we ask the recurrent question: do media shape realities or are they their results? Do the portrayals of refugees lie in the eye of a Lebanese beholder?
These answers will need more time to be developed. A good start would be by reflecting on how exclusion is manifested in our society and in our media, in overrepresented and/or underrepresented images which are embedded in our psyche, which lead to a «symbolic annihilation» of whatever doesn’t suit us or look «like us». It is a protracted mediated textual process. If neglected it will thwart access to justice, to the enjoyment of human rights and to freedom of expression; it will create other layers of inequalities and the social exclusion of the «Other».