A City by the Sea: Uncovering Beirut's Media Waste

Abstract

What kinds of social, cultural, and political narratives emerge when we pay attention to how media are physically rendered as trash? By reducing media to their material forms and tracing their journey from use to disuse, the stories behind media activism start to appear. This article studies where Beirut’s media waste goes and who brings it there. A women-only beach, a refugee camp from the early 20th century, and some of the most vulnerable populations in Lebanon all exist alongside Beirut’s trash. They are part of the story of media in the Arab world because media are waste. While media activism in the Arab world is often marked by the visibility of bodies in protest, media waste in Lebanon is governed by a politics of invisibility that covers and hides the very social problems that media activism seeks to address.