The use of media discourse by militant organisations in the Middle East for advancing objectives and framing identities: The case of 'the Islamic resistance': the military arm of Lebanese Hezbollah

The research aims to identify and interpret the media discourse of "The Islamic Resistance"-the military arm of Hezbollah, which is constituted by the outputs of "The Military Media Unit" and the resistant speeches of the Secretary-General of Hezbollah. It intends to extract the codes and signs of this discourse, reveal their meanings and explore their objectives. This research is significant because no other study has identified the elements of this discourse and no other study has investigated all the outputs of “The Military Media Unit”; especially the written statements of "The Islamic Resistance" and the fighter’s testaments. A qualitative methodology, critical discourse analysis, has been chosen for this research, because it allows the researcher to identify the discourse for analysis, its parameters and to explore the hidden meanings. The archival data have been chosen as methods to collect data to address the proposed research questions. It is expected that the main outcome of the research will be a framework, which could be used by other researcher to study the military media units of other insurgents groups, which operate in the Middle East.