Keywords

1 Introduction

Organizational studies and social movement analysis are among the most creative fields in the social sciences (McAdam and Scott 2005). Within organizational studies, organizational ecology has made great strides in the study of patterns of whole industries. Organizational ecologists have been able to develop several tools with which they studied the dynamics of many different types of industries. While these tools were apt at tackling mature industries, i.e. industries which had successfully emerged and for which the boundaries had stabilized, the fertile area of industry emergence was barely touched (Astley 1985). The result was that the two fields, organizational ecology and social movement analysis, rarely crossed paths. This was because while organizational ecologists were busy studying stable industries, social movement analysts were concerned with the study of how movements challenge and change established systems. In the few cases were the two fields met it was at the hands of social movements theorists who tried to incorporate some of the ideas of organizational ecology into social movement analysis by studying the effect that organizations have on social movements [e.g. Minkoff (1997), Olzak and West (1991), and Olzak and Uhrig (2001)]. Recently, armed with a new array of theoretical tools, organizational ecologists have turned their attention to one of the most important questions in the study of any industry: why, and how, do certain industries emerge? Since emerging industries are characterized by instability (Navis and Glynn 2010) and incoherence (Santos and Eisenhardt 2009) this meant that a shift in perspective was inevitable for scholars of organizational ecology.

This paper will look at the reasons that led to the emergence of the newspaper industry in Lebanon by looking at how these newspapers “framed” their goals. A close inspection of the early issues of the founding newspapers in Lebanon will show that there were two dynamics at play. These two dynamics, macro-level structural changes and micro-level grievances, have been usually studied separately in the social movement literature. More so, this paper will also show that neither macro-level structural changes nor micro-level grievances were secondary in importance. The emergence of the newspaper population is a product of both these dynamics, and the result would not have been achieved if one of them were absent or indeed artificial. This paper will also show that the first newspapers were evolutionary and not revolutionary in that, at least at first, they considered themselves obedient subjects of the Ottoman Sultanate. Most importantly I will show that the original framing process did not infringe on the political sphere, but instead it set as its target the educational sphere.

2 Literature Review: Social Movements

One of the dynamics which social movements can contribute to with regards to industries is the legitimation process in nascent industries (Weber et al. 2008). In order to have a clear understanding of how these movements contribute to the emergence of markets or industries, it is imperative that we have a clear definition of the term. A flexible definition was provided by Rao et al. (2000, p. 244) who state that “Social movements may be defined as organized collective endeavors to solve social problems.” However, Weber et al. (2008, p. 531) contend that “there is in fact limited consensus in the literature on collective behavior about what constitutes a social movement.” Touraine (1985) criticized studies of social movements for being too naïve and lacking a clear definition for the term. Snow et al. (2008, p. 11) define social movements as such: “Social movements are collectivities acting with some degree of organization and continuity, partly outside institutional or organizational channels, for the purpose of challenging extant systems of authority, or resisting change in such systems, in the organization, society, or world system in which they are embedded.”

Extant literature in social movements has diverged along two clear paths: the resource-mobilization perspective and the psychofunctional perspective (Snow et al. 1986). Scholars adopting the first perspective concentrate on strategic issues which are found in organizational studies such as organizational structures and processes (McAdam and Scott 2005). Unlike the psychofunctional perspective, resource-mobilization rejects the notion that emotions are the driving factor behind these movements (Cohen 1985). It is therefore no surprise that this school of thought assumes high levels of rationality in the agents. While some resource-mobilization theorists do not deny the presence of grievances, they argue that such grievances are a natural product of all power plays and hence are present in all environments (Cohen 1985). Therefore, the real driving force behind the formation of social movements is to be found in the changing opportunities (Jenkins 1983; McCarthy and Zald 1977). Others, most notably Zald and McCarthy (1987) have taken an even more extreme view arguing that grievances are in some cases manufactured by the entrepreneurs in order to increase the likelihood of the success of the social movement. In general, all resource-mobilization theorists hold that the focus on micro-level factors such as the psychological state of those involved has pushed back important macro-level processes.

Proponents of the psychofunctional perspective on the other hand stress the importance of grievances that are the result of “preexisting social arrangements” (McAdam and Scott 2005), while criticizing the assumption of excess rationalism on which the resource-mobilization perspective was built (Snow et al. 1986). In addition, just as they were criticized for ignoring macro-level processes, researchers who adopted the pshychofunctional perspective criticized the proponents of resource-mobilization for ignoring micro-level processes (Jenkins 1983). The grievances, as argued by these researchers, were what provided the movements with the necessary social capital (McAdam and Scott 2005). However, it was necessary that these grievances be shared and understood by most agents alike. The heightening of these shared grievances would lead to the formation of social movements. Snow and Soule (2010) distinguished between individual-level grievances and mobilizing grievances and argued that while individual-level grievances were ubiquitous, mobilizing grievances were not. Resource-mobilization scholars, by failing to make this distinction, have wrongly assumed that all grievances were ubiquitous.

Although the above differences are substantial, there is a consensus among social movement scholars with regards to the importance of what Goffman (1974) referred to as “framing”. Goffman (1974) posited that frames helped people make meaning of the world. In that way, they are similar to schemata except that frames, unlike schemata which were predefined perceptions, are outcomes of negotiated meanings (Benford and Snow 2000). Social movement scholars, most notably Benford and Snow, used frames to develop what they termed collective action frames. In the words of Benford and Snow (2000, p. 614) framing, “denotes an active, processual phenomenon that implies agency and contention at the level of reality construction. It is active in the sense that something is being done, and processual in the sense of a dynamic evolving process. It entails agency in the sense that what is evolving is the work of social movement organizations or movement activists. And it is contentious in the sense that it involves the generation of interpretive frames that not only differ from existing ones but that may also challenge them. The resultant products of this framing capacity are referred to as “collective action frames.”

These collective action frames are crucial in the formation of new markets, or industries, in the case of entrepreneurs who operate within social movements (Rao et al. 2000). For the scholars of resource-mobilization, the social movement will have to enhance, or even create, in such a way that they resonate with the audience. For scholars of the psychofunctional perspective, collective action frames must be preceded by an increase in the intensity of the grievances. Either way, the social movements will have to diagnose the problem, propose a solution, and provide the motivation for action (Snow and Benford 1988; Weber et al. 2008). This implies that (1) agency has a central role in the formation of new industries (Benford and Snow 2000), (2) collective action frames are dynamic in their nature (Benford and Snow 2000; Snow and Soule 2010), (3) meaning creation and interpretation play an important role in the process (Benford 1997, 2005; Snow et al. 1986).

In order for social movements to legitimate their activities, they have to strategically align their collective action frames with those of the audience (Benford and Snow 2000; Lounsbury et al. 2003; Snow et al. 1986). Frame alignment is concerned with linking the social movement’s orientations to those of the individual audience members (Snow et al. 1986). The presence of grievances by itself is not a sufficient condition for successful mobilization. What truly matters is that the social movements identify and give meaning to these grievances in a way that resonates with the intended audience (Benford 2005; Snow et al. 1986). Since collective action frames “encode” experiences (Snow and Benford 1992), social movements must make sure that this encoding is both intelligible and not counter-intuitive to audience members. Part of the alignment process is the creation of a vocabulary and a set of “stories” that help shape the audience’s perceptions (Wry et al. 2011). In doing so, social movements can help situate their goals and intentions within the wider context of the cultural and political environment. These linguistic tactics however also play a central role in the creation of a unified collective identity, which is a necessary condition for successful emergence (Swaminathan 2001; Weber et al. 2008). According to Benford and Snow (2000, p. 631), “an understanding of identity processes, and particularly collective identity, is fundamental to understanding the dynamics of social movements.”

3 Empirical Setting: The Emergence of Lebanese Newspapers

The Lebanese newspaper Hadiqat al-Akhbar the first privately-owned Arabic newspaper to be published in the Arab world (Illias 1997; Tarazi 1933). This newspapers was preceded by several Arabic newspapers, but those were either published by governments or, in one case, in a non-Arab country. Up until the end of 1879, the Lebanese had published 26 newspapers in Lebanon, out of which 25 were published in Beirut. Out of the first 26 newspapers, one was published by the government, two by groups of scholars, six by Christian missionary groups, sixteen by Christian individuals and one by a Muslim. Figure 1 shows the founding events in Lebanon, Egypt, and all the remaining Arabic countries up to 1879 excluding those newspapers that were founded by the government. Although hailing from one of the smallest countries, the Lebanese were the leaders when it came to the emergence of the newspaper industry in the Arab world.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Newspaper founding events in all Arabic countries up to 1879. Source: Author’s own study

Full size image

4 Micro-level Grievances

In 1516, the Ottomans conquered Greater the area which is today known as Syria and Lebanon. The Emir of the Mountain was free to rule the land and tax the people, as long as he paid the Ottoman authorities the required respect, and taxes. Previously, the main feature of Middle Eastern commerce was the transit of Asian peppers, spices and silk. Most of these products were destined to Venice (Owen 1993). Now, the Ottomans allowed other European companies, most notably English, French and Dutch, access to the area. The result was an increase in the demand for silk which had previously been produced on a small scale for local use only (Salibi 1988). So in order to increase production of silk, the Druze landlords needed access to a larger labor force, and that is exactly what they found in the Maronites of the north. This led to many Maronites migrating from the north to the areas controlled by the Druze landlords.

Eventually Fakhr al-Din rebelled against his masters and in 1633 he was captured and taken as a prisoner to Istanbul where he was executed (Salibi 1988). The rule of the mountain passed to the Shihabs, led by Bashir Shihab, who were Sunnites from the Wadi al-Taym and not from Mount Lebanon. The Shihabs slowly started converting to Christianity. Throughout all this time, the Christians had been increasing in number at a far greater rate than their Druze counterparts. When Muhammad Ali Pasha rebelled against the Empire he sent his son Ibrahim Pasha to invade Greater Syria (Syria, Lebanon, Transjordan, and Palestine) in 1832. Bashir Shihab chose to align himself with the Egyptians. Unlike the Ottomans, the Egyptians decided to rule all of Greater Syria directly, and they proved to be much more efficient at it (Makdisi 2000). A revolt soon spread to many areas, and in order to counter it, Ibrahim Pasha distributed arms to the Christians who stuck by the side of Bashir Shihab (Tarābulsī 2007). This was to be the first time in the history of Mount Lebanon that the policies of the rulers were based on the sects of the people (Khalaf 1982). Previously, the people were divided into commoners and chiefs, with the former living to serve the later. According to Makdisi (2000), 1841 was the birth of sectarianism in Lebanon.

The Ottomans returned to a different Mount Lebanon than the one they had previously ruled. The old social hierarchy was starting to disintegrate and in its place a new system, which was based on sectarian divisions, was starting to form (Khalaf 1982; Makdisi 2000). As the Druze chiefs returned from their exile back to their villages and tried to reclaim the lands that they had previously controlled, they were faced with a hostile Christian peasantry. The peasants were backed by the new emir of Mount Lebanon, and the Druze were quick to retaliate. The fighting soon spread to other regions and hundreds of Druze and Christians were killed. On December 7 Mount Lebanon, for the first time ever, was split along sectarian lines into two qaimmaqamiyya. The first was located in the north of Mount Lebanon, where the peasants and the chiefs were Maronite. To the south another qaimmaqamiyya was established. These reforms did not last long. The Maronite peasants in the north refused to be slaves to the Khazin and Hubaysh families while the Druze in the south refused to recognize the authority of the newly appointed qaimmaqam (Tarābulsī 2007). To make matters worse, the Ottomans recruited Maronites to help them fight the Druze rebellion in the south, thus further increasing sectarian tensions.

The missionary groups also contribute to the rising sectarian tensions. Makdisi (2000) described the arrival of missionary groups as a gentle crusade. Previously, contact between the Lebanese and Christian groups such as the Jesuits was confined to the Roman Maronite College in Rome and to some advisors for the Maronite Patriarch in Lebanon. In the nineteenth century this field of contact was significantly expanded to include Mount Lebanon and coastal cities like Beirut. The arrival of the missionary groups, at a time when Bashir Shiab II was becoming more and more aware of his Christianity and the Egyptians and European powers were redefining the landscape along sectarian lines, would speed the process of ‘sectarianization’ in the mountain.

The years of 1856–1858 were economically one of the hardest on the peasants. By that time France had become the main recipient of the silk produced in Mount Lebanon. In that period Lyon suffered an economic recession and the production of silk in Mount Lebanon was halved (Tarābulsī 2007). To make matters worse, there was an economic downturn which began in 1856 (Buheiry and Conrad 1989), which was followed by an especially severe winter in 1857, and a dry season in 1858. All these factors led to the commoners rebelling under the leadership of Tanyus Shahin. Shahin complicated matters further yet when he mixed the social with the sectarian. Once again, a social problem was to be given a sectarian spin, and the Christianity of the rebellion became its most defining characteristic (Makdisi 2000). The Druze of the south were quick to act. By the end of the war, 5000 people were killed in Mount Lebanon alone with 200 villages being burnt (Tarābulsī 2007).

The old system which was based on the qaimmaqamiyya was replaced by combining both into a single mutasarrifiya (Tarābulsī 2007). The new system proved to be successful and Mount Lebanon would not be the scene of any civil strife from then until the fall of the Ottoman Empire. However, Mount Lebanon was slowly to lose its prominence. The civil war caused many people, mostly Christians, to immigrate. While Mount Lebanon was loosing its importance, Beirut, on the other hand, was beginning to rise.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Beirut had a population of 6000 and there was little indication that it would become the most important city in Lebanon (Buheiry and Conrad 1989). By the end of the century it had a population of 120,000 (Fawaz 1983). During the same period, it also grew from a small seaport which was overshadowed by Alexandria and Sidon to become the most important seaport in the Mediterranean. Unlike Mount Lebanon, the original inhabitants of Beirut were Sunnites and Greek Orthodox. Due to their defeat, many Maronites left the mountain and went to Beirut, thus ending the previous equality between Muslims and Christians in the city (Fawaz 1983). While the opening up of the Ottoman Empire to trade with Europe in general benefitted Beirut, it was the silk industry which had the greatest effect on the city’s fortunes. With rising demand from France silk became the number one export of Beirut (Buheiry and Conrad 1989; Owen 1993). However, there were many factories which were owned by local people, although these tended to be smaller in size (Fawaz 1983; Issawi 1988). These local owners, and the peasants that ploughed the lands, needed capital in order to run their businesses. It was in the 1850s that new European financial institutions were created to channel savings into investments abroad (Owen 1993). According to Buheiry and Conrad (1989, p. 503), “most significant in terms of social transformation was the rise of a rural bourgeoisie of landowning peasants with access to the lucrative silk-trading centers in nearby Beirut, and with political ambitions to match their growing economic and social status.” Unfortunately, the increase in the material wealth of the city was not equally distributed among its inhabitants. The new middle class that connected European capital and Mount Lebanon was largely composed of Christians, with very few Sunnites (Issawi 1978). As early as the 1840s, only 3 of the 29 merchant houses that traded directly with the Europeans were Muslim (Fawaz 1983). In addition to the financial gains, the Christians were the recipients of important legal benefits thanks to capitulations extended to them by the Europeans.

5 Macro-level Structural Changes

The first printing press in the Arab world was established in 1610 Der Qazhiya in Tripoli, which is located in the north of Lebanon (Sabat 1958). This printing press did not last long and it would be more than 100 years before another printing press was established in Lebanon. The first Arabic printing press in Lebanon was established in 1733 by the Deacon Abdullah Zakher (Sabat 1958). The Muslims had to wait until 1727 when on the 2nd of July an imperial decree stipulated that books in the Ottoman Empire were to be printed. Sabat (1958) identifies the years 1834–1869 as the years where the printing press took hold in Lebanon, especially in Beirut. The first printing press to be owned by an individual was the Syrian Printing Press that was founded by Khalil Khoury the founder of Hadiqat al-Akhbar the first newspaper. Others followed in 1858, 1861, 1865 and 1868.

The missionary groups that landed on the shores of Lebanon had an immense impact on the cultural scene in Lebanon. The most important was the educational sphere. In 1831 a group of American Protestants came to Lebanon in an effort to convert Catholics to their sect. In 1834 the American missionaries relocated their printing press from Malta to Beirut so that they could easily supply their schools with books. The Jesuits established their first printing press in 1847. The Catholic missionaries and the Protestant missionaries soon started competing with each other and this led to the creation of many teaching institutions.

The middle of the nineteenth century saw the birth of many small-scale schools. This is clearly reflected in a series of reports submitted to the Colonial and Continental Committee of the Free Church (Lowthian et al. 1856). According to the reports schools were being established in several villages quickly and that the attendance numbers were increasing each year. The 1863 report states that there were 1500 pupils in attendance at all schools. The American missionaries on the other hand report that by 1860 they had opened 33 schools which had a total of around 1000 students (al-Rifa’I 1967). By 1862, the number of schools had increased to 41 (Tarābulsī 2007). The Jesuits on the other hand had opened schools in Beirut in 1839, in Zahle in 1844, and in Damascus and Aleppo in 1873.

Soon, the schools that were being built were taking on a much larger scale. In 1863, the Lebanese scholar Butrus al-Bustani founded the National School. In 1865 the Roman Catholic Patriarch Gregory the first also founded al-Madrasah al-Batriyarkiya. In 1866 the American Protestant missionaries relocated a school that they had previously started in Ibay to Beirut and called it the Syrian Protestant College. In 1875 the Jesuit fathers moved their school from Ghazir to Beirut and renamed it Saint Joseph College. That same year also saw the founding of al-Hikmah school by Joseph al-Dibs, and in the following year the Muslim scholar al-Shaykh Ahmed Abas al-Azhari founded his own school. By 1869 there were 75 schools in Beirut with almost 6% of the population enrolled in them (Issawi 1988), and by 1878 the number had increased to 92 (al-Mishkat 1878). Official Ottoman registers indicate that by 1894 the percentage of illiterate persons above the age of ten in the administrative district of Beirut had dropped to 34.72%, giving Beirut a rank of 23/36 in terms of the highest illiterate percentage in all Ottoman districts (Karpat 1985).

6 Founding Fathers

Some of the newspapers were founded by organizations, but most were founded by individuals. All of the entrepreneurs except one were Christians. Why so? Social movement theorists have argued that social movements are formed by groups of people who are excluded from formal channels (Rao et al. 2000). A review of the literature concerning the Christians in the Ottoman Empire clearly shows that this was the case for them. According to Abu-Manneh (1980, p. 287), originally, religious identity was the basis of social hierarchy in the Ottoman Empire.

“In the ottoman system the population of the Empire was organized upon a confessional basis, not upon a territorial or linguistic one. It was composed of religious communities each of which had its own internal organization and was controlled by a religious hierarchy. Socially and culturally each community formed a separate entity, each kept apart from the other. There was no attempt to create uniformity.” Muslim supremacy was clear in almost all aspects of the empire (Hourani 1957). Imperial decrees from the eighteenth century clearly state that Christians and Jews should have lower buildings than Muslims (Göçek 1996). The main requirement for joining the ranks of the rulers was religious affiliation (Göçek 1996; Masters 2004).

Although the Ottoman reforms of 1839 and 1856, which were referred to collectively as the Tanzimat, declared that all subjects were equal regardless of their religious affiliation, the stark reality continued to remain different (Masters 2004). In fact, the period in which the reforms were declared happened to witness a rise in sectarian tensions between Muslims and Christians, especially in Lebanon (Khalaf 1982; Maoz 1982). The Muslims were increasingly hostile to the Christians due to the fact that the new reforms had made them politically their equal while the Christians retained their economic supremacy thanks to their ties with the Europeans whose influence was constantly increasing.

The Christians, through their education, managed to secure jobs as scribes for the governments or translators for European consulates. However, none was able to rise to high places in the government bureaucracy. With rising hostilities and an inability to change the facts on the grounds through government participation and action, many Christians in the Ottoman Empire opted for a new way out: ethnic nationalism. This was most prominent among the Christian population in the Balkans. The Christians of the Arab-speaking Ottoman world responded quite differently:

Although sectarian unrest occurred in Egypt and the Fertile Crescent, Arabic-speaking Christian intellectuals and community leaders eventually were able to articulate several options with which to configure their political community as the empire collapsed under the weight of myriad ethnic antagonisms. Their choices were usually very different from those explored by their coreligionists elsewhere in the empire. This was due, in part, to the very crucial fact that Christian Arabs shared a common language and culture with their Muslim neighbors (Masters 2004, p. 8).

The Christians of Lebanon did not argue for separation from the Ottoman Empire, nor did they argue for “Christian rights”. Instead, they argued for something that was in line with the Ottoman reforms, and that was Ottoman citizenship with no regards to religion, and they used newspapers to spread their ideas. One of the main advantages of newspapers was that they were written in the Arabic language, which both Christians and Muslims of Greater Syria shared. In this case, the language of the medium was in itself a message. Butrus al-Bustani argued that “Syria must not become a Babel of languages…as it is a Babel of religions and sects” (Abu-Manneh 1980, p. 291). Through newspapers, the Christians argued for education, because it defied religious boundaries.

7 The Framing Process

All of the newspapers seemed to agree on the source of the problem that was facing the nation as a whole, and that was lack of education among the people. In the first issue of Hadiqat al-Akhbar, the author thanks God for providing the people with a great Sultan such as the one that is sitting on the throne now and describes the age as the age of knowledge and science. He says that the sciences have been renewed in this age at the hands of the sultan. The author then asks the people to support this great government that wants to spread knowledge, the arts and civilization. The author says that the greatest aspect of this generation is the science that aims at making life easier. The article goes on to analyze the importance of science in civilization. As it turns out, the word civilization appears in most of the early newspapers. The founders of the newspapers make it clear that the goal of the nation should be to strive for civilization because only on that path can it achieve true progress. In the 22/4/1861 issue of Nafeer Souriya the author talks about civilization and its importance for society. This takes up half of the issue,

From the previous definition we can see that true civilization does not achieve its full potential and goal unless it was the cause of press, both physically and intellectually. This is so because if one was only concerned with the physically aspects then he would be nothing but an animal.

The author then talks about how the countries of the east were the center of civilization. The author then criticizes the fake civilization in which people merely imitate the habits and clothes of the foreigners. A similar article appears in the 3/4/1870 issue of al-Zahra. In the 15/6/1875 issue of Thamarat al-Funun the author asks,

What was it that caused the human race to break the shackles of ignorance and to become civilized and enlightened other than science?

The first issue of the al-Jam‘iya al-‘Ilmiya al-Souriya states that:

There is no doubt that if we were to contemplate what would cause us to rise after our fall, we find nothing more suited to the job than building schools and libraries followed by attending scientific organizations.

The 1/1/1870 issue of al-Zahra also states that its will to increase the spread of knowledge had led to its publication. In the 1/4/1878 issue of al-Mishkat the author starts by praising the administrative unit of Syria, and mentions that the governor of Syria told him that newspapers are one of the best methods to spread education.

We can see here clearly that education is mentioned as the sole solution to the problem facing the nation. Other newspapers identified the problems of the nation and linked them back to the fact that there was no education in their homeland. In the 26/6/1879 issue of al-Moktataf, for example, there is a letter that states that religious intolerance is the source of our problems. The solution to this, according to the first issue of the al-Jam‘iya al-‘Ilmiya al-Souriya, is science because it brings people together no matter their national or religious differences. This same argument is made in the 1/11/1870 issue of al-Jinan where the author says that knowledge will lead to a decrease in religious intolerance. It should be noted that religion itself was not viewed as a problem, but what was the problem was the mixing of the religious and political realms. This is explicitly mentioned in the 19/11/1860 issue of Nafeer Souriya where the author criticizes mixing the civil and the religious, but also criticizes the people for not being really religious. In the 22/2/1861 issue the author talks states that,

The civilized countries have experienced the damages caused by the mixing of the religious and political spheres and so have created a divide between the two.

The secular identity of the education which the newspapers sought was clearly illustrated in a debate between al-Bashir, the newspaper published by the Jesuits and the scientific newspaper al-Moqtataf. Al-Bashir had launched an attack on al-Moqtataf because the later had printed an article about the Catholic faith which al-Bashir considered to be a bad article. In its response, al-Motataf criticizes the “Jesuits sectarian newspaper” for launching an attack on “our scientific newspaper”. Another example about how the newspapers linked most problems to the absence of science can be found in n the 8/1/1869 issue of the al-Jam‘iya al-‘Ilmiya al-Souriya where the author talks about how the French used scientific methods to advance the agriculture industry, which he considers to be the best of all industries. In the 4/4/1869 issue the author criticizes the current state of manufacturing in the Arab world and again argues that education provides the solution.

What role do newspapers play when it comes to education? As it turns out, the newspapers are seen, by their authors, as tools of education which are as important as schools and printing presses. According to the 22/4/1861 issue of Nafeer Souriya, the proper tools of civilization are: proper religion, political governance, and education (in which he includes newspapers), and trade. This is not the only place where we see that newspapers are included among educational institutes. In the 1/1/1871 issue of al-Jinan the author mentions newspapers along with schools when he is talking about the spread of education:

Ignorance has been lifted from upon us in 1870, and schools and the sciences have increased, and the newspapers have spread everywhere.

Again, in the 2/4/1875 of Thamarat al-Funun the author starts by thanking God and praising the Sultan. He then mentions the newspapers along with schools and printing presses as proof that education is spreading:

The clearest proof of the generosity of the government is the founding of schools and printing presses, which are the source of knowledge, and the spreading of the newspapers that contain what has happened in the morning and night.

In the 1/10/1870 issue of al-Jinan there is a letter from the ruler of Mount Lebanon to al-Jinan in which he subscribes to the newspaper for a school so that the children will read it in order for them to gain knowledge and to love the government. In the 6/10/1877 issue of Lisan al-Hal the author starts by thanking God and the Sultan, and then states that newspapers are among the best tools for obtaining education. In fact, in the emergence period, the authors explicitly mention education as the goal of newspapers and not the reporting or analyzing of news items. The first issue of Thamarat al-Funun states that:

It is not hidden that the newspapers of this age are the cause of progress…because they spread the good deeds of the good people and the bad deeds of the bad people…and it presents to you feasts of useful information.

In the 11/5/1870 issue of al-Nahla the author starts by thanking God. He then mentions the other newspapers favorably and states that they have managed to defeat the armies of ignorance and fix what has been ruined. In the 1/1/1870 issue of al-Jinan the author also states that the main purpose of starting the newspaper is the spread of knowledge and scientific facts. In the 1/6/1876 issue of al-Moktataf, the author says that he has started the newspaper as a service to his country because it will spread useful knowledge. Again he also mentions that knowledge is the solution to the various problems that face the homeland.

The main motivation method used by the newspapers was to remind the people of the glorious past of their nation and promise them that through education, more specifically through newspapers, they can reclaim what they have lost. In the first issue of Hadiqat al-Akhbar, the author reminds the people of the past glorious days of this part of the world and argues that they could repeat their previous success with the aid of education. In the 22/4/1861 issue of Nafeer Souriya the author reminds the people of the glorious past and argues that they can reclaim their place among advanced nations. In the first issue of al-Jam‘iya al-‘Ilmiya al-Souriya the author also praises the past history of the Arabs and asks why the Arabs don’t use science today to emulate their predecessors. The issue talks favorably about the past and critically about the present situation of the Arabs. The 10/4/1868 issue of the same newspaper also glorifies the history of the Arabs at a time when the Europeans where fighting barbarically. The same issue has a poem which says that Beirut has been dark because of the absence of science, but that it is now a shining planet thanks to the efforts of Sultan Abd al-Azizi. In the 4/4/1869 issue there is an article which considers the history of Great Syria to be a glorious one and argues that the West has taken their culture from Syria when they occupied it in the past. These same ideas are reflected upon in most of the other newspapers. In the 1/1/1870 issue of al-Jinan the author states that the rays of knowledge were first emitted by the East towards the West which has used this knowledge well. In the 1/3/1870 issue of Hadiqat al-Akhbar the author asks if the Arabs will one day return to their glory and answers that it is inevitable that time will take us back to what politics has ruined. In the 15/2/1876 issue the author says:

If we were to ask history about our past we would see the beauty which was…we have now stripped our nation from this beauty…I doubt that there is anyone among us who does not acknowledge the fact that we are in retreat and we have let go of what causes our progress…The progress of our homeland is dependent on love, science, and industry.

In the 15/11/1878 issue the author says:

Science is the best thing that we have, and the scientists are the heirs of the prophets. We have not done a tenth of what any civilized nation should do in order to preserve the sciences which our ancestors have nourished and delivered to the Europeans who we have now made our idols.

In the 12/8/1878 issue of Lisan al-Hal the author argues that racial differences do not matter when it comes to education. What matters are the tools that each nation has. In one case, in the 6/3/1862 issue of Hadiqat al-Akhbar, the author talks about some financial troubles that al-Jawa’ib was going through. He then blames the people for not buying the newspaper in large quantities and criticizes them for not supporting something which is a sign of civilization.

This emphasis on education and progress is even reflected in the names of the newspapers. Table 1 shows the names of these newspapers in Arabic and the translation to English. Interestingly, only one newspaper had a title that was the name of a geographic area. A recurring theme in the names of the newspapers is the idea of a paradise of knowledge. The word heaven appears in the names of three newspapers. We see that one newspaper is named “The garden of the news”. The founder of this newspaper had intended to name it “The Shining Dawn”. Another newspaper is named “the Flower” while another is named “the Bee”. In the first issue of “the Bee”, the author talks about how he intends for his newspaper to act like a bee and fly from flower to flower (in reference to other newspapers) picking the best from each. We can also see a newspaper named “Fruits of Knowledge”. In the 15/11/1870 issue of al-Jinan, there is a poem which praises the newspaper by comparing it to a paradise which contains the most delicious fruits and a river of knowledge. In the 15/7/1876 issue of the same newspaper there is a letter written to the newspaper that says:

…and the gardener would open up his heavens and we would enter into them while enjoying the breeze and the taste of their fruits and drink from the water of literature which bursts from the fountains of wisdom and acumen so that we shall never go thirsty again.

Table 1 Names of the early newspapers
Full size table

We can see that newspapers were thought of as a garden that contained fruits. These fruits represented the knowledge contained within the newspaper. I inspected the names of all newspaper published between 1880 and 1890. There were a total of 14 newspapers founded in Lebanon during that period. None of the names of these newspapers referred to a garden or a paradise. As I argue next, the reason for this is that the newspaper industry matured during the end of the 1870s and the founders re-framed their movements and re-defined their goals.

While identifying education as their goal, the early newspapers constantly stressed the importance of the Arabic language. As mentioned in the section that dealt with the founding fathers, language was the crucial factor in the adoption of a secular ottoman citizenship by the Christians of Lebanon. By stressing the importance of language, the founders of the newspapers, who were mostly Christians, were strengthening the bonds between them and their Muslim compatriots. Language, just like education, transcended the religious boundaries. In the first issue of Nafeer Suriya, Butrus al-Bustani, in asking the people to unite and to abandon animosities, states that a single language binds the people. It was common for newspapers to include translated novels in their issues, either on the lower half of the first page or on the last page. The son of Butrus al-Bustany, Salim, constantly translated European novels to the Arabic language and printed them in A‘mal al-Jam‘iya al-‘Ilmiya al-Suriya and in his father’s magazine al-Jinan. In the 5/12/1868 issue of A‘mal al-Jam‘iya al-‘Ilmiya al-Suriya, one of the reasons he gave for this was that he wanted the people to remain interested in the Arabic language. Newspapers also contained many poems and in some instances these poems appeared on the first page of the newspaper. Half of the 3/5/1868 issue of A‘mal al-Jam‘iya al-‘Ilmiya al-Suriya is a poem. Articles that explained some vague points in Arabic grammar also constantly appeared in the newspapers. The discussions regarding the Arabic language turned into a heated debate when the newspaper al-Jawa’ib, which was published by a Lebanese in Turkey, decided to write a critique of some of the literary works of the famous Arabic poet Naseef al-Yazaji. Naseef’s son, Ibrahim, responded to these critiques on the pages of al-Jinan. Given all of the above, we would expect that a considerable proportion of the newspapers to be dedicated to issues that dealt with the Arab language. Almost one quarter of the 4/3/1868 issue of the scientific magazine A‘mal al-Jam‘iya al-‘Ilmiya al-Suriya was occupied by either poems, translated novels or technical articles dealing with Arabic grammar. Almost one full page out of a total of four in the 4/12/1858 issue of Hadiqat al-Akhbar was also taken up with such subjects as well. Of course, there were instances in which there was nothing that dealt with the Arabic language, like the 3/5/1860 issue of Hadiqat al-Akhbar, but in general the proportion dedicated to such issues took was considerable.

8 The Re-framing Process

Around the middle of the 1870s, the framing process utilized by the newspapers starting shifting from talking about the need for education and started talking about the need for political reform. In fact, the newspapers redefined their goal as being one of delivering and analyzing news, in place of the older educational role. In the 1/9/1875 issue of al-Jinan we see one of the first acts of this re-framing process. The author talks about the importance of newspaper in analyzing events so that the average person would be aware of what is going on. By 1877 we start seeing more of this new goal orientation in more than one paper. In the 15/4/1877 issue of the same paper the author says:

The printed material in general, and the political, scientific, reformative, industrial and medical newspapers in particular are the cause of the spread of knowledge. This knowledge is the foundation upon which progress and growth form. And they are among the greatest methods with which a nation is to be aware of its rights and wrongs, and to project its needs and to preserve its rights from the trespassing of the officials. The freedom of the press is a proof of the advance of any nation.

In the 15/6/1879 issue of the same newspaper there is an article about freedom of the press. Newspapers, according to the author, scrutinize the working of the government officials and so officials have to be careful and alert:

The newspapers seek to inform the public about the intentions of the government, while also informing the government of the needs of the people…One of the greatest and most critical of issues is that which relates to the freedom of the press.

Again, in the 17/11/1879 issue of Thamarat al-Funun the author criticizes the suspension of a newspaper in Aleppo and declares that this is tantamount to a declaration of tyranny. Such language was absent previously although many newspapers were suspended for different reasons. In the 15/1/1879 issue the author says that reforms should be concentrated on spreading knowledge and differing viewpoints and questioning officials through freedom of speech and newspapers. This same idea is reflected in the 15/12/1879 issue of Thamarat al-Funun where the author defends the role that his newspaper is playing by stating that the job of newspapers is to inform the public about government actions and critically observing their implementation:

The job of the newspapers is to inform the people of the sources of such actions and to state the available resources and to highlight what good has been done.

If we look at Fig. 2 we can see that around the time that the newspapers were going through this re-framing process, the number of founding events in Lebanon decreased while the number of founding events outside Lebanon by Lebanese founders increased. Industry historians [e.g. al-Rifa’i (1967), Tarazi (1933), Ayalon (1995)] have unanimously argued that the ascension of Sultan Abd al-Hamid to the throne resulted in the persecution of the newspapers. In fact, the total number of newspapers in the Ottoman empire declined after the arrival of the new sultan (Göçek 1996). While there is no doubt that the new sultan was less tolerant than his predecessors, the re-framing process itself also caused some of the damage that was to come. In order to investigate this, I sampled one issue per month of each newspaper from 1851 until the end of 1879. The total issues sampled were 659 with a total of 9826 pages. Of course, these pages differed in size. Some were A4 sizes, others were close to the sizes found in daily newspapers today. I then used content analysis in order to code the data (Riffe et al. 1998). Specifically, I went through the issues to see any references to the authorities and coded a variable as “Supportive” if all references in the issue were positive, “Critically” if all references were negative, “Both” if the same issue contained positive and negative references, and finally “None” if there was no references whatsoever or if the references were neutral in that they did not criticize nor support the government. Table 2 shows the result with the cells representing percentages. We notice that up to 1870 there was no critical reference to the government in any newspaper. In addition, there were much more positive references than no references at all. In the lower bottom of the table we see that some issues both criticize and support the government while a small number only criticize the government. Also noticeable is the fact that the number of issues that do not mention the government is around the same as the number of positive references. The table shows us clearly that the newspapers have started operating differently than before. This happens around the same time as the re-framing process mentioned above. Therefore, it seems that the newspapers started looking at the government in a more critical way. Was this manifested in a way other than the mentioning of the government?

Fig. 2
figure 2

Newspaper founding events up to 1879. Source: Author’s own study

Full size image
Table 2 Breakdown of the references to the government
Full size table

In addition to coding the above variable, I coded two more variables. The first reflected the amount of space taken up by political news and the second reflected the amount of space given to political analysis. The variable political represented factual information while the variable political analysis represented pieces in which the author gave his (there were no females in the industry at that time) opinion what had happened or what was about to happen. Based on the re-framing process described above, we would expect that the amount of analysis increase over time. If so, then this would indicate that the population was certainly maturing in both their new goals and in the methods implemented to reach these goals.

Figure 3 shows the scatter plot of the total amount of space dedicated to each category over the years 1851–1879. The figure also shows the loess graph of both variables. I did not include the purely scientific newspapers in this graph because we are interested in the change between the two political variables. The scientific newspapers would not contribute to this change. This way we can see how the newspapers that dealt with all topics, or at least political issues, changed their structure. This graph clearly shows that the political analysis sections of the newspapers took space away from the political news. Since space is a zero sum game, if one increases then the other decreased. The two loess graphs appear to move in harmony. In addition, we can see that at the far end of the graph the dynamic starts to reverse. The persecution of the newspapers led to many newspapers closing down, changing their content, or in some cases, moving to Egypt.

Fig. 3
figure 3

Political content analysis excluding the scientific newspapers. Source: Author’s own study

Full size image

We can conclude from the above analysis that the re-framing process, along with the rise of Abd al-Hamid, had severe consequences. Previous studies only discussed the effect that the new Sultan had on the wellbeing of the industry. The evidence shown here gives us a new perspective on the issue. In addition to a sultan with an oppressive nature, the newspapers suffered because they had matured. They no longer had a view of themselves as being a paradise to which the reader was invited. They now demanded a more serious role, one that enabled them to question the government’s actions and intentions. This was reflected in their definitions of the newspaper’s goals as well as in the type of content that they published. As long as they were regarded as educational tools the government did not suppress them, but once they matured the government’s response changed. The mere act of criticizing the government does not in itself constitute a re-framing process for newspapers. A change in the nature of the regime or a change in the economic or cultural aspects of society might entail a change in the way that newspapers approach their subject matter. If so, then such a change does not warrant to be labeled as a “re-framing process”. The situation highlighted by the above discussion is quite different though. First of all Table 2 and Fig. 3 show that there was a change just after the beginning of the 1870s. Newspapers started analyzing events more than before and favorable mentions of the government started to decrease. Second, we have seen that around the same period newspapers started defining their goals in a completely different way. Newspapers were less regarded as tools of education and more regarded as tools to monitor government functioning. This was also reflected in the names of the newspapers that no longer reflected the image of a garden or paradise. These changes in the industry were not a result of a change in the environment. No major events took place around that period that would cause the newspapers to be less pleased with the government than before. There were also no significant economic or cultural shifts. The Ottoman government was in a state of steady decline, but this had been the case for tens of years as shown in the history section of this paper. Finally, while the era of Abd al-Hamid was to prove to be severely restricting, this was not the case from the beginning of his ascension. Abd al-Hamid had been put on the throne because the bureaucrats believed that his predecessor was not responding properly to challenges. Abd al-Hamid had pledged to modernize the empire as a precondition for his becoming the new sultan. In fact, one of his first acts was the declaration of the constitution and parliament. This is why this paper argues that the re-definition of the goals and the re-structuring of the contents of the newspapers were a result of a re-framing process undertaken by the newspapers themselves, and not the result of macro-events. According to Hannan and Freeman (1984) core changes cause an increase in organizational mortality. It has been shown by Minkoff (1999) that these core changes have a significant, and negative, impact on social movements. The re-framing process discussed above is clearly a case of a change in a “core feature” since it modifies the current identity (Hannan et al. 2006) and it resulted in a significant negative impact on the newspaper industry as can be seen from Fig. 2.

9 Discussion and Conclusion

Social movement scholars have studied the framing process in which social movements alert their audience to problems, propose a solution, and provide the necessary motivation. Two groups have emerged as a result of this question, where one argued that the intensification micro-level grievances were the trigger while the other group argued that macro-level resource-mobilization considerations were the central actor, with grievances being used merely as tools.

This paper has showed that the newspaper industry in Lebanon, in its early formation days, constituted what is regarded as a social movement. Industry members have stated that the nation faces the problem of falling behind when it comes to civilization economically, politically and culturally. They proposed that the only solution to this problem was the spreading of education and argued that newspapers were one of the most important tools in doing so. Finally the newspapers have motivated the people by arguing that the previous glory days of the East can be repeated through this strive for education. Most of the newspapers have ascribed to themselves the role of educational. In this regard, this paper has shown that the newspapers have projected a unified identity to their audience members in that they clearly had the same tools and the same goals.

Olzak and Uhrig (2001) state that the historical and social context of social movements matter and that any study of social movements needs to take them into consideration. This is certainly true in the case of the Lebanese newspapers industry. While Olzak and West (1991) found that an increase in ethnic conflict led to the founding of ethnic newspapers in the U.S., this paper has shown that an increase in religious conflict led to the emergence of newspapers which argued against religious divisions and instead opted for a secular ottoman identity.

In addition, this paper has contributed to the micro-macro debate by showing that in the case of the Lebanese newspaper industry neither of the competing explanations provides an adequate explanation on its own. Prior to the formation of the industry the Lebanese landscape witnessed severe changes in both the grievances faced by the people and the resources made available to them. The arrival of the missionary groups and the subsequent introduction of the printing press and modern educational institutions were accompanied by the dissolving of the old stable social hierarchy and the creation of a new one in which sectarian identities were brought to the forefront. This new social system was the source of much of the population grievances. The place in which these dynamics mixed the most was in the coastal city of Beirut. Beirut was gradually emerging as the new political, economical and cultural center of Lebanon due to the introduction of European capital, and the demographic change which was caused by Christians escaping their persecution at the hands of the more powerful Druze landlords. It was around that time that the Christians of Lebanon launched their newspapers in the language which was common to them and the Muslims. These newspapers stressed the importance of the Arabic language. The two main concerns of the newspapers, education and the Arabic language, were the two forces which these Christian founders used to create a unity which was more inclusive to them than the Islamic identity of the empire.