Online Chatting in Beirut: Sites of Occasioned Identity-Construction

Abdallah contributes an article on contextualized identity shaping of Lebanese youth through online and offline activities in internet-cafés in Beirut. Young people pose themselves in one instance as the Christian defenders of Lebanon against a Muslim threat and in the next instance, as Hezbollah fighters against an Israeli enemy. Through the display of online chat sequences and line-by-line analysis in different instances, Abdallah argues that instead of having a fixed, essential identity the youth construct social identity vis-à-vis the other according to practical ‘here and now’ purposes.