Lebanon is a small nation, between Syria and Israel/Palestine, that is ranked 81 out of the worlds 190 nations. During this research project, we spent 5 weeks finding articles that reported on our country, in which 9 articles were collected. Within the 9 articles, 5 of them consisted of conflict issues with other nations and safety concerns. There are many factors and research on how articles get chosen to be put into the newspapers. According to Jones’s research, “Foreign Nation Visibility in U.S. News Coverage: A Longitudinal Analysis (1950-2006)”, he explains the three contextual factors that influence U.S. news coverage, which include geographical proximity, the country’s significance and relationship to U.S., and the country’s prominence …show more content…
When looking at the articles most had to do with war and conflict, but once you take a closer look it talks more about Syria and Israel/Palestine than the countries internal problems within itself. As the U.S and Lebanon have never been in combat, Lebanon has had a previous war with Israel back in 2006. Israel is one of Americans closest allies, therefor a close watch is put under Lebanon’s relations with other countries. The article published in, The Times of India, “Israeli military says its drone crashes in Lebanon” mentions the war against Lebanon and other surveillance drones that have been shot down. Jones has three factors in his theory of how much coverage a country will get. One factor is geographical distance, Berkeley to Beirut is a total of 7,272 mi away from each other. As this seems like a far distance Lebanon becomes relevant because it is touching borders with Israel and Syria. Israel is an ally, continuously battling with Palestine to create some sort of peace with the land, while Syria is currently in the midst of a civil war. Since the borders of Lebanon have lots going on and America is very involved in both countries Lebanon stays meaningful. Another factor Jones mentions is the countries significance to the United States. Not only is Lebanon a middle man for these two countries but when looking at a lot of news from other Middle Eastern countries Beirut is the home base. This is because since not many problems happen in Lebanon it is used to report on other countries that it would not be considered safe to do so. An article in which you see something that could be crucial to the U.S. is the article by The Washington Post, “Rights group: Lebanon evicting Syrian refugees from towns”. This article explains how Lebanon is evicting Syrian refugees. This is important to the United States because there currently is a Syrian refugee problem and although this nation won’t take them, they look to other