User talk:Ashton Takudzwa Chikumba

Book Review: Hizbullah Image Management Strategy written by Lina Khatib

Hizbullah is a leading Islamist Lebanese paramilitary political party in the world in terms of possessing a sophisticated image management strategy. Hizbullah image management strategy serves as a framework to enhance a party’s reputation, continuation and legitimacy. The introduction and the initial chapter exhume the evolution of the party’s image strategy management showing how the party was successful in reaching out to many constituencies beyond the Lebanon as far as the entire Arab nation. The evolution and its success are measured by the methods and tools as well as practices institutionalized to achieve legitimacy and these are well pointed out by several chapters in the book entitled; victimization, divine image, personified, branding. This explaining how an organization’s undertakings are shaped to adapt to the environment and how the environment is modified by the organisation. Created as an anti-Israeli Islamist militia following the invasion of Lebanon by Israel in 1982, Hizbullah emerged stronger through the use of media to become recognizable on the International arena branding itself a resistance movement with those in South Africa and Latin America. In 2005 challenges arose during the Cedar Revolution but were used as a stepping stone into popularity for the party as it professed to be Lebanon’s savior from Israeli aggression. Its image was strengthened by the assassination of Prime Minister Hariri in 2005 which saw the creation of March 14 political coalitions and marketed itself in patriotic terms. The second part shows how Hizbullah marketed itself to be a brand. The party here is seen to have transformed itself into an unbeatable brand in the Lebanon state in the sense that it established a bond with a group of audiences, for it is said that a good product brand name is measured by the quantity of people it captures, creating a solid bond. It accomplished this by employing triumph messages over all media platforms, the leader created a strong bond, and he made the wars to be televised, paying attention to where the war was actually happening, during the Israel attacks. The party made great achievements in grabbing support from the general populace with the help of these occasions, being viewed as a Middle East provincial force. The third part focuses on the divine image that was one of the strategies of Hizbullah image management. The group states the existence of a divine or heavenly picture that the party is a savior from God, there to remove the Israeli suppression, with the aid of the Almighty. It made sure that the people would look upon it in times of needy, and to ensure this they planted hundreds of billboards that commemorated the group’s accomplishments, including around Beirut’s international airport, which featured text in Arabic, English and French. Moreover, the book furthers with the personified image as the other strategy by Hizbullah as a legacy management way. It says that there is need of a charismatic leader who is both a leader, and however the party included a further trait, thus the must be a platform of the party. Nasrallah son was killed in battle as a soldier and this made him popular for standing humble on behalf of the party, boosting moral from the followers and he became ‘victory personified’. This is with the regards to the fact that this strategy helped to cultivate and disseminate party’s image and ideology. The book states out another image management strategy, which is the use of simulacra meaning the use of likeness or similarity. The party associated itself with the image of Mughniyeh and the words of Hizbullah martyred leaders, making the image so hyper. Above all, it made use of insignificant names of people and made their deaths reliable making them remembered. Ashton Takudzwa Chikumba (talk) 15:00, 24 April 2017 (UTC)Victimization as another image management strategy, this was meant to make the opposition part to be spoiled, eroded. It is realized that this strategy is to mitigate he battle public image and opinion through black painting opponents. This was done through self-referential discourse, adaptable discourse and support erosion. The main objective here is to discolor the reflection of the opposition part. Finally the book stresses that the challenge of the Arab spring and outlined a smooth conclusion all these strategies had a huge impact in the sense that it praised the people’s rise towards their rights, the Arab spring took this idea and embraced it to encounter problems in the Arab nations. In other words, the challenges of the Arab spring have been utilized as a way to enhance the Hizbullah image management. It had encountered problems and henceforth it used self-referential framework although some situation been reported to have backfired. However, the book then makes arguments that STL accusations are likely to input doubt towards Hizbullah’s fidelity to some of its non-Lebanese supporters and have been tagged as terrorist association by the US and the UN. It ought to be noted that the party managed to put up with this in the past maintain its legacy, it remains to be viewed that whether it will continue to apply such principles or craft other ones.