Media’s Reversed Provision: De-Growth of Beirut Post - 2005

For the past several decades, hundreds of thousands of Arabs have been staging protests and occupying streets and squares in their respective capitals and cities. The most prominent of these revolts, however, began against the occupying Syrian forces in Lebanon with the cataclysmic explosion that killed former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri in 2005. Almost contagiously, the Arab word began witnessing an unprecedented wave of civil uprisings (many of which are still ongoing), resulting in a series of separate revolutions - collectively termed as the “Arab Spring.” These demonstrators, protestors, and revolutionaries have flocked en masse to overrun streets and squares in their respective capitals and cities (much to the horror of their authoritarian leaders), seeking to bring down these regimes through powerful rhetoric, and oftentimes violence, demanding new political systems and parties, and governments. For example, the civil uprising in Syria has plunged the country into what now appears to be a long and bloody civil war.