Social Sphere

After months of speculation, Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri announced on September 19 that Future TV will suspend its operations, citing the same financial reasons similar that lead to the closing of Al-mustaqbal newspaper last year. The crisis began around three years ago and saw multiple employee strikes along the way due to the management’s inability to pay their salaries on time. “The decision is not easy for me and for the public of the Future movement, nor for the generation of founders, workers and millions of Lebanese and Arab viewers, who accompanied the station for more than a quarter of a century,” Hariri said in his official statement, emphasizing the television’s eagerness to settle the rights of all workers in due time and promising a restructuring that would hopefully lead to a re-launch of programming in the future. The decision became the top trending topic on Twitter in Lebanon, as users mourned the loss of one of the country’s leading TV networks while others pointed out the pitfalls of its heavily politicized media ecosystem.

The US woke up to its deadliest mass shooting of the year on August 3, when a 21-yearold gunman opened fire at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas, killing 22 people and injuring 24 others. The murderer had published a manifesto referencing the Christchurch shootings alongside various white nationalist/anti-immigrant themes to imageboard website 8chan shortly before the attack. He was subsequently arrested by the police and charged with capital murder. The tragic incident took its toll on the country that saw a number of mass shootings this year and has been struggling with gun control policies for years, as celebrities and citizens took to Twitter to voice their outrage and call for tighter gun laws.