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AbstractThis paper contributes to theorizing how citizens articulate discontent with consociational politics in divided societies by offering a comparative analysis of protest frames across popular movements in Bosnia–Herzegovina and Lebanon. It first detects central differences in how protesters criticize the system, propose alternative politics, and construct collective identities. It then argues that these divergences in frames can be understood with reference to the territorial and political nature of divisions in Bosnia–Herzegovina and Lebanon, which pose different restrictions on framing choices. Simultaneously, it suggests we should be careful not to understand frames as determined by institutional frameworks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT During the Lebanese 2019 uprising, the country's second‐largest city, Tripoli, became portrayed as the “bride of the revolution.” This portrayal was seen to break with the city's former stigma as a hotbed of extremism. However, as this article shows, local protesters were not unambiguously happy with this portrayal. Based on interviews with 30 protesters and fieldwork observations, the article seeks to understand the critical views of this narrative. It shows that there was a widespread perception among Tripoli protesters that the narrative of their city as the “bride of the revolution,” as presented by the media, represented a distorted image that romanticized, depoliticized, and de‐contextualized the uprising. This narrative was believed to serve a political purpose. These findings provide two main contributions to scholarly debates concerning identity narratives and the role of media for social movements in societies like Lebanon, characterized by hybrid regimes and a complex media‐politics nexus. First, it points to the complexity of breaking stigma and changing geography‐based identities. Second, it shows how the political ownership of media fuels the understanding of media frames as being politically motivated, even when they seem sympathetic to protests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to explaining limitations to the inclusivity of protest movements against sectarianism through a case study of the 2019 Lebanese October Uprising. The study scrutinizes the challenges key organizers in Beirut faced when seeking to address issues of inclusivity concerning residents from two Shiʿite majority communities in and around the city. Engaging social movement theories on intersectionality and political opportunity structures and drawing on data from twenty-two in-depth interviews, it shows that organizers were attentive to stereotyping and exclusive attitudes concerning young men from the two communities. Yet, while expressing a desire to address these, organizers also found themselves caught in a dilemma, fearing that their efforts to promote inclusivity could trigger accusations of sectarian biases and favoritism. These findings provide important inputs to wider scholarly debates concerning the relationship between protests and other forms of anti-sectarian mobilization as well as the costs and desirability of enhancing inclusivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]