As Lebanon cycles through conflicts and crises, straining the tenuous peace that took hold during the hasty ending of the civil war, people continuously wonder if the latest development will be the one to usher in another period of protracted turbulence. Some events grab headlines for days while other times episodes pass by without exceptional coverage although perhaps they were more deserving of rigorous debate and attention.
During the course of follow-up engagements between those involved with UMAM D&R's "What Is to Be Done?" initiative, the disparity in news coverage between Lebanon's various developments stuck out to the program’s most active participants and led them to wonder why some current and random events were construed as potentially detrimental to civil peace, and whether this designation was merited. Hence, "Random Acts of Violence vs. Civil Peace" was launched. These participants came together and decided which seemingly random events ought to receive further study and which newspapers this study should focus on.
Narratives and assessments from a handful of dailies were examined as researchers noted how the media and political representatives were framing the event. The results of this research were produced as publications to allow others to take stock of the different manners in which developments are covered by Lebanon's spectrum of newspapers and media outlets.
One of the most common requests during the "What Is to Be Done?" initiative was for additional documentation, hence, as UMAM D&R looked into random acts of violence and civil peace it gathered publicly available information from a multitude of sources and centralized it in the second addition Memory at Work, using systematic organization to allow anyone with an interest in Lebanese peace and instability to easily obtain more information. Through a sharing of documents and findings, hopefully the Lebanese public will be better equipped to understand the complexities and various dimensions of Lebanon's civil war period.