Social Media and LGBTQI Activism in Lebanon

In the wake of unprecedented societal and political backlash manifesting in an online and offline hate speech, Lebanese LGBTQI individuals and organisations have used social media to counter LGBTQI-phobia. Addressing a gap in research on LGBTQI social media activism in Lebanon, Antoine Badaoui draws attention to the social media affordances of visibility and association in the work of non-profit organisations.

Investigating how these affordances of social media shape the use of said platforms, and are crucial to understanding LGBTQI behaviour online, Badaoui shows how in Lebanon LGBTQI individuals use social media to network with like-minded people and acquire knowledge away from offline LGBTQI-phobia. Employing rich qualitative research, the book tells the story of how Lebanese LGBTQI non-profits leverage the affordances of visibility and association to foreground sexual minorities’ rights in a LGBTQI-phobic society. Questioning whether the organisations’ online strategies meet the needs of LGBTQI individuals, the author shows how the organisations are mindful of the sexual minorities’ individual safety, adopting a ‘collective visibility/individual invisibility’ social media strategy to advocate for the sexual minorities’ wellbeing without jeopardising their safety. Addressing themes of ‘counter-surveillance’ and ‘counter-invisibility’ to challenge the hegemonic socio-political structures that have long put these individuals under scrutiny, the study also brings to life how Lebanese organisations engage with both LGBTQI transnational and regional activisms.

Providing knowledge on sexual minorities’ social media activism beyond the Euro-American digital realm, this text is valuable for researchers, students, and LGBTQI non-profits and activists working in the Arab world and in similar LGBTQI-phobic contexts.

Antoine Badaoui is a leading qualitative researcher with a focus on non-profit organisations, social media strategies, and LGBTQI advocacy. He is an expert on LGBTQI social media affordances in Lebanon and is a strong advocate of inclusion and social justice. Badaoui is Associate Researcher with the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies (NEOM) at the Federal Fluminense University (UFF) in Brazil.