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Syrian Citizen Journalism
Melissa Wall
a
& Sahar el Zahed
b
a
Department of Journalism, California State
UniversityNorthridge, USA
b
Islamic Studies, University of California at Los Angeles, USA. E-
mail:
Published online: 25 Jul 2014.
To cite this article: Melissa Wall & Sahar el Zahed (2014): Syrian Citizen Journalism, Digital
Journalism, DOI: 10.1080/21670811.2014.931722
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2014.931722
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SYRIAN CITIZEN JOURNALISM
A pop-up news ecology in an authoritarian
space
Melissa Wall and Sahar el Zahed
The Syrian revolution has brought about the creation of a pop-up news ecology, an entirely
new, oppositional news system fueled by citizen activists use of social media to report on the
conflict. Drawing on Castells Network Society, this essay assesses the ways such a system
came into being, finding a dearth of professional journalism, rapidity of its formation, and
assistance by external connectors as key factors. This case study provides a potential model
for the ways pop-up news ecologies may form in other authoritarian countries.
KEYWORDS Arab Spring; citizen journalism; network society; social media; Syria; war
Introduction
Syrias news media system has historically been tightly managed by the govern-
ment, which allows it little freedom to report. While Syrians are able to get outside
news via satellite, domestic journalists have always answered to the Syrian regime.
Openly critical journalists frequently had to leave the country and report from neigh-
boring Lebanon or further abroad (Najjar 2004). Foreign reporters who ventured to
Syria were often assigned minders and had their movements tracked. When Syrians
joined the Arab Spring that erupted across the region in 2011, reporting via cellphone
and video camera on their own uprising, the countrys repressive news environment
received a large jolt. Within weeks, new, alternative online news sitesoften consisting
of nothing more than a Facebook page or YouTube account sporting a self-created
logowere covering the countrys outbreak of dissent, reporting the oppositions side
of events and criticizing the regime. In a short time, the country was blanketed with a
new layer of reporting (Battah 2012; Harkin et al. 2012). The changed information envi-
ronment was nothing short of remarkable.
While parts of this emergent system included satellite television channels set up
by dissidents and others outside the country and newspapers distributed by hand within
Syria, this new information ecosystem operated primarily online via social media. Self-
trained reporters, often amateur citizen journalists and activists, shared with domestic
and global audiences visceral images and accounts of the government crackdown on a
growing protest movement and then an even more bloody response to an armed resis-
tance movement. As Syrian activist Rami Nakhla has said, Social media overthrew
Digital Journalism, 2014
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2014.931722
2014 Taylor & Francis
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the censorship system (Groundtruth: New Media, Technology and Syria 2012). Syria
suddenly found itself being reported on by an unsanctioned, oppositional news system.
The appearance of this system was stunning in breadth and speed. It was not
until 2001 that Syria had even allowed the opening of privately owned newspapers
(Pies and Madanat 2011). While the reporters for the private newspapers had begun to
develop a sense that their roles were not to propagandize for the state but to be use-
ful to Syrias citizens, they were still mostly unwilling to challenge the regime, with their
stories often vetted by the Ministry of Information (Starr 2012).
1
Private broadcasting arrived even more recently in 2006, but it was subject to
even stricter controls, while Facebook was banned until 2011 (Pies and Madanat 2011).
2
Locally produced news focused on a limited range of official sources in the capital of
Damascus. The other major citiesAleppo, Homs, Hama and Latakiahad only one
local newspaper each, and all of these were government run (Battah 2012). Yet within
a period of months, an entirely new news system had been built: a pop-up news ecol-
ogy consisting of new news outlets, new news collectors and a new activist-derived
perspective on the news. This was not an evolutionary change with media outlets
slowly opening, and a legal system establishing press freedoms evolving over decades,
if not centuries; instead, this was a sudden, dramatic disruption. Multiple nodes cover-
ing much of the country made this new system national in scope, even giving a voice
to the opposition in smaller locations traditionally ignored by the state media. It pro-
vided a counter-representation of important events, making it different from what one
would historically have seen from Syrias domestic media, although remaining opinion-
ated (Dawisha 2013). It involved multiple actors representing different constituencies,
many operating individually or in small groups. By 2012, observers could note, Every
city has a media office every street has reporters (Battah 2012, 52).
Certainly, activist media are not new to the Middle East. One of the dominant
journalism modes in the region has been one of opinion, which frequently takes politi-
cal or sectarian sides, and a resistance media that opposes outside aggression or impe-
rialism (Kraidy 1998; Harb 2011). Even Al Jazeera, which has been seen as a
groundbreaking voice for Arab opposing views, is identified as a forum for resis-
tance that has been particularly active in covering the Arab uprisings (Zayani 2012, 2;
Lynch 2013).
Previous research has detailed how small-scale resistance media have been
embraced by various actors within the region during periods of conflict (Sreberny-Mo-
hammadi and Mohammadi 1994; Harb 2011). More recently, the rise of what Castells
(2009) has called mass self-communication or participatory media within the Middle
East has also been viewed as a significant change to the regions media environment
(Khamis, Gold, and Vaughn 2012; Lim 2012). Yet many of these internet-based efforts
have tended to be the work of individuals (Ramsay and Riegert 2012). Syrias new news
ecology created an entire system producing activist-fueled content for domestic con-
sumption as well as international audiences.
We characterize this system as a pop-up news ecology, a term used to capture
the speed with which it has appeared and its contingent nature. Our overall aim in this
essay is to identify the characteristics of this new news system, however ephemeral it
may prove to be, that have enabled it to become part of the global news network and
the ways it may, as Allan (2012, 25) puts it, reconfigure the geometry of informational
power in the network society. In doing so, we draw on Castells (2009) articulation of
2 MELISSA WALL AND SAHAR EL ZAHED
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the concepts of communication power and networks as they intersect with journalism,
creating what Heinrich (2011) has called network journalism, a form of news with par-
ticular importance at the intersections of information nodes between amateurs and
professionals (vii).
Network Power and Journalism
The analytical framework for this essay draws on the idea that the emergence of
new digital communications which are global in reach and interactive in nature have
fundamentally changed and continue to change all aspects of society (Castells 1996). In
other words, the network form is the key organizing structure of today with communica-
tion technologies crucial enablers of its existence. While the rise of network society has
been interpreted by some to mean horizontal social relations in which power is equally
dispersed (the so-called flat earth of Friedman [2005, 169] and others), Castells (2009)
warns against such a simplification. Networks do not mean equality in terms of access;
instead, some actors are included and others excluded, a process that is not determined
by technology divides per se but more broadly by prior social structures distribution of
power (Castells 2009). Also often overlooked is the existence of different networks (e.g.,
military versus media networks) and, within these, the ways certain nodes become more
central than others, further evidence that power remains unevenly distributed even
within what may seem to be an equalizing form (Castells 2009; van Dijk 2012).
Thus, it is important to note that those who want to gain power within the net-
work must in some cases fight to gain a space and then to hold onto it (van Dijk
2012). Specifically, Castells (2009, 47) argues that power comes from the ability to (1)
configure a network or the ability to (2) become switches between networks. Those
actors seeking to create counter power, must reprogram existing networks and/or dis-
rupt the dominant switches (Castells 2009, 431). Reprogramming a communication net-
work means changing cultural codes, or more broadly, the ways reality is perceived
and responded to. Castells (2009, 70) argues that this can occur through the processes
of mass self-communication, which is self generated, self directed and even self
selected in its reception. In his formulation, mass self-communication is harnessed by
social movements and other insurgent actors who use participatory media to create,
distribute and consume new cultural codes. Even so, insurgents must further seek to
incorporate their new frames of understanding into global information networks. That
is, to create an alternative network may not be enough to obtain meaningful amounts
of power; that network must also successfully interface and influence other, larger more
powerful networks so as to enhance the insurgent actors inclusion within broader pub-
lic spaces. That may mean adapting to the language and norms of the existing system
in an act of what Castells (2009, 302) characterizes as potential servitude to the more
powerful forces controlling the networks. Even then, none of these processes guaran-
tees success. After all, existing networks primarily serve the most powerful and main-
taining that power is the priority of those who benefit from it. Further complicating
this phenomenon is the fact that these networks are not static; instead, the high-speed
velocity at which communication networks operate make all networks unstable (van
Dijk 2012). The acceleration of social relations may enable or disable attempts to
change existing networks.
SYRIAN CITIZEN JOURNALISM 3
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Networked Journalism and Mass Self-communication
The concepts of a network society and mass self-communication have both been
employed effectively by researchers seeking to explain fundamental changes taking
place within journalism. Heinrich (2011, vii) suggests we have seen the emergence of
networked journalism, arguing that there is a dense information net spanning the
globe and the interactive qualities of its nodes create a decentralized news sphere
characterized by non-linear news flows. She sees networked communication structures
as flattening the differences between larger corporate media and smaller, more activist
outfits in terms of access to information and its distribution, and puts a special empha-
sis on the ways less-established news nodes may benefit from the network structure.
Similarly, Russell (2011, 1) writes that networked journalism allows members of various
publics [to] make journalism material that intersects, mixes, and is distributed to a new
heightened degree.
Along the same lines, the concept of mass self-communication has been applied
to citizen media, particularly citizen journalism (Allan 2012). Matheson and Allan (2009)
viewed networked journalism as it intersected with war reporting by focusing on blog-
gers, an established line of research that appears to fit with Castells concept. They
argue that networked journalism combines to form information networks which may,
potentially, reorder the social distribution of power (107). Yet used in this context, it
can suggest an atomized individual action (a solo blogger comments on an event or a
citizen journalist snaps a photo of an earthquake) that is incorporated into the larger
global flow of information and news. It does not bring to mind an entire alternative
system in which multiple actors are acting in concert or at least in parallel, such as has
erupted in Syria. We interpret the Syria case in this essay as a more intentionally con-
nected, more densely networked effort. In what follows, we first lay out how the net-
work came into being, then answer the question: What aspects of the Syrian pop-up
news network have aided in its inclusion in global news flows?
3
The Rise of a Pop-up News Ecology
In the spring of 2011, the first beats of a new news system pulsed across Syria.
As citizens protested against President Bashar al Assads regime, the state media
refused to give them a voice, and instead labeled them terrorists and armed gangs
who needed to be eliminated (Lesch 2012, 101; Yazbek 2012). In response, demonstra-
tors attempted to document the nascent protest movement themselves. These new
content creators and distributors were often young, part of a new generation of Syrian
youth under the age of 25, who make up some 60 percent of the countrys 22 million
people (Lesch 2012).
Monitoring protests, then later shootings, bombings, etc., activists collected infor-
mation via cellphones or video cameras, documenting what was happening in towns
across the country. They posted this information online, often to social media sites such
as Facebook. Most of these early content creators were not trained as reporters and
had no journalism experience; they were just guys with laptops and could be incon-
sistent and unprofessional in producing content, including blurring activism with their
reporting and failing to behave ethically (Kenner 2013). Others, such as citizen journalist
4 MELISSA WALL AND SAHAR EL ZAHED
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Rami al-Sayed, who was shot dead in Homs in February 2012, began adapting to pro-
fessional norms. Al-Sayed was said to have posted 800 videos from the conflict before
he died (Syrian Citizen Journalist Rami al-Sayed Dies 2012).
As the clashes between the regime and its opponents became increasingly vio-
lent, the alternative pop-up news system became more widespread. Within weeks of
the start of the Syrian uprising, multiple online news collection and distribution sites
had been created by Syrian opposition members. Some became established sources of
information for audiences inside and outside of the country. Among the first organized
citizen reporters were those working for the Local Coordinating Committees (LCC),
political groups made up of thousands of activists found in nearly every city and town
who operated at the neighborhood level (Sawah 2011; Rundle 2012). The LCCs priori-
tized creating media content. Their reporting teams relied on the work of professional
journalists as well as those with no journalism experience (Syrian Journalists and Activ-
ists 2012). LCC members reported in 2012 that they were running 70 reporting com-
mittees throughout Syria which, in addition to organizing street actions, conduct
detailed daily body counts, confirm individual deaths through families, eye-witnesses or
by personally identifying the bodies of those killed (Arnold 2012).
Almost all citizen media groups employed Facebook and YouTube as their key
online platforms; other sites such as Twitter and the live video-streaming platform
Bambuser were also regularly used. Together, the activists used Western commercial
sites to create an alternative, oppositional news system, one which helped them con-
nect in turn with powerful, global information networks.
In particular, Syrian citizen content became an important part of the conflicts
coverage by the regions Pan-Arab satellite news channels, which actively solicited citi-
zen contributions. Citizen reporting also became a frequent source within the commu-
nication networks of the Wests most powerful news providers (Harkin et al. 2012). Yet
the pop-up system remained at heart oppositional, seemingly a Syrian iteration of
Harbs (2011, 228) liberation propaganda model in the Levant. In documenting the
conflict, citizen journalists were motivated by activism, which on several occasions led
to ethical problems with what they produced (Mackey 2012; Salama 2012).
Our assessment suggests that the following key factors helped Syrias citizen jour-
nalists inject their voices into the global and local information streams:
The existence of a domestic information vacuum. Most professional reporters
within Syria were mouthpieces for the government. During the early stages of
the conflict, international reporters were either barred from entry or so heavily
monitored or under threat of violence once inside Syria as to make it almost
impossible for them to work there. This created a need for a different news
system to keep people informed.
A high-speed birth. Aided by easy to use technological tools and global plat-
forms such as YouTube, Syrian oppositional outlets formed and were produc-
ing and distributing information exceptionally quickly. This speed met the
news needs of people within Syria and news providers outside of the country.
The system was not planned but spontaneous and thus nodes sprang up
rather than waiting for a grand plan to call the reporting to life.
Adaptation to professional norms of international journalism. This ranged from
mimicking professional news branding to learning professional information
SYRIAN CITIZEN JOURNALISM 5
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collection practices. Some activists curated or promoted the work of others to
international news outlets and audiences.
Assistance from external connectors. Actors and organizations outside the coun-
try, particularly diaspora or exiled Syrians, boosted the alternative networks
social and material capital in ways that were necessary for these domestic
nodes to have a chance to connect with larger global information networks.
Filling an Information Vacuum
Reporting in and from Syria has never been easy, whether for domestic or inter-
national reporters. As the conflict continued and became more violent, the act of
reporting for international journalists (as well as Syrian citizen journalists) became
increasingly dangerous. In 2011, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported two
confirmed journalist deaths; in 2012, 28 were confirmed killed for their reporting (70
Journalists Killed in 2012 n.d.). In 2013, the British newspapers The Times, Guardian and
Observer announced that they would no longer accept photographs from freelancers
working in Syria because it was considered too dangerous to report from and, thus,
accepting freelancers work would be unethical (Turvill 2013). (Although they later qui-
etly reversed themselves.) Journalism and human rights groups labeled Syria one of the
most dangerous countries in the world to report from (Syria: Journalists Deliberately
Targeted 2013). If professional international journalists did go into Syria, they put those
they spoke to at risk. Some believed this was morally unacceptable as well as unpro-
ductive. This meant that international news outlets reporting of the conflict became
increasingly limited to reporting from locations outside of Syria.
Syrian citizen journalists stepped into this breach, providing information that
might otherwise never have been reported. Likewise, the arrival of news operations at
local levels such as Douma City news, based in the city of the same name, meant that
towns historically ignored by Syrias professional news media were suddenly being
reported on by activist reporters (Arnold 2012; Syrian Journalists and Activists 2012).
These self-created news outlets directly challenged the governments attempt to con-
trol information circulating inside and outside of the country, offering new frames for
talking about what was happening in Syria and demonstrating how actors could speak
for and about themselves. Amnesty International declared that without citizen journal-
ists reporting from their neighborhoods, often at great risk to their own safety, news of
many of the abuses, including crimes against humanity and war crimes, might never
have reached the outside world (Shooting the Messenger 2013, 5). Clearly, the excep-
tionally dangerous conditions for reporting in Syria have contributed to the rise of new
Syrian news producers.
An Accelerated Birth
Within the first weeks of dissent, activists had created online presences that they
specifically used to disseminate news and information collected by citizen reporters.
These ranged from the particularly successful Shaam News Network (SNN), which was
founded February 28, 2011 to a city-focused outlet, ANN (Aleppo News Service), which
launched its Facebook page on March 27, 2011.
6 MELISSA WALL AND SAHAR EL ZAHED
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SNN provides a particularly clear example of how this system sprang to life. With
Facebook and YouTube as key tools, SNN became a high-profile actor within the new
network of information providers arising within Syria (see Figure 1). In the first two
months of its establishment, SNNs Arabic-language Facebook site had 495 posts. Con-
tent included 242 videos. Some were embedded productions from professional media,
especially BBC Arabic, some from activists.
4
However, SNN increasingly ran original con-
tent. While it is not possible to definitively know if its decision to rely heavily on video
helped propel it to international attention, this seems likely as video has been charac-
terized as the key storytelling form of the Middle East uprisings (Sasseen 2012). The site
immediately engaged an audience, generating 38,316 comments in two months. Mean-
while, its YouTube channel has reached more than 53 million views and more than
74,723 subscribers as of May 2014.
The accelerated development of SNN and its almost instantaneous generation of
an audience illustrate the speed with which individuals practicing Castells mass self-
communication helped to form the new national news system. Of course, simply estab-
lishing a social media account, for example, with YouTube is not enough. SNN built its
audience quickly in part because it was consistently providing fresh content that was
otherwise unavailable. For domestic audiences, their content featured views and infor-
mation that the heavily censored state media would not even admit existed (Harkin
et al. 2012; Starr 2012). Syrians have reported that SNN was one of their key local infor-
mation sources within the country (Janbek and Cambell 2013). It is important to
remember as well that SNN was merely one node in the Syrian pop-up news system,
although certainly one of the most successful in terms of reach.
FIGURE 1
Shaam News Networks YouTube channel
SYRIAN CITIZEN JOURNALISM 7
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Another high-profile node in the nascent network was Ugarit News, which had
more than 59,000 subscribers as of May 2014. Ugarits YouTube channel launched on
April 2, 2011. Other well-known news collectors were hyper-local such as the Baba
Amro News Network (see Figure 2), a neighborhood in Homs whose Facebook page
was started in 2012, or Lattakia News Network named for the coastal city in which it
operated, which started its Facebook channel on June 2, 2011.
Within six months of its launch, SNN content was being regularly shared glob-
ally and its images were being used in international news coverage. It appears to
have first been used as a source of information about the Syria conflict by interna-
tional media in April 2011, when the Christian Science Monitor and Wall Street Jour-
nal attributed information about the uprising to the site. They identified SNN as an
opposition Facebook Page and protest site, respectively (Blanford 2011; Malas
and Lauria 2011). By the end of April 2011, a little over two months after the site
launched, USA Today ran an Associated Press story using SNN video and a still pho-
tograph grabbed from a video, calling it in a cutline, amateur video that was
released by Shaam News Network, a Syrian freedom group (Western Powers
Push 2011). The next month, well-known New York Times columnist Thomas Fried-
man had singled out SNN as the go-to site for video from the Syrian uprising
(Friedman 2011).
News outlets in at least 17 countries
5
had used SNNs content within half of a
year. This includes the New York Times, Germanys Die Tageszeitung and Switzerlands
Radio Television Suisse. Most of these outlets used images from SNNs video or still
photographs; some like USA Today and Frances LExpress directly embedded SNN video.
Emblematic of its acceptance, in July 2011, the Washington Post ran a photo from a
Hama protest that thanked Al Jazeera and SNN for their coverage of the uprising, thus
suggesting an equivalency for some Syrian news audiences (or activists at least)
between the established global satellite broadcaster and the newly established citizen
newsroom.
FIGURE 2
Baba Amro is a neighborhood in Homs, a Syrian city that has faced repeated violence
between the government and rebels. This is the Facebook page for citizen journalists who
report on that neighborhood
8 MELISSA WALL AND SAHAR EL ZAHED
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Adapting to Professional Norms
Some of Syrias citizen journalists showed an awareness and even a desire to con-
form to certain norms of professional journalism, and this seems to have contributed to
their being able to gain admission to global news flows. Their adaptations ranged from
the stylistic to the practical. In terms of the former, many of these newly established
sites created their own logos, which they embedded into their video and sometimes
other iterations of their social media presence. In its earliest days, SNN was already
embedding its own logo on content (primarily videos of protests). One of the founders
of another Syrian pop-up reporting outfit, Deir Press Network, said that the logo distin-
guished their site so that viewers could easily find their videos to both watch and also
as a place to contribute content: [W]e came up with a logo that we posted on each
video. We had protesters in the beginning of videos carry signs with our names and
with websites where you could upload your videos anonymously (Thiemann 2012).
Beyond attempting to look professional, however, the citizen journalists faced
more basic issues around the credibility of their actual reporting. Several high-profile
instances came to light, suggesting that they were recycling content from previous
events or even staging news. In one case, the BBC used an image purporting to be
from an activist documenting the Houla massacre; this turned out to have been a pho-
tograph taken by a professional photojournalist in 2003 in Iraq (Silverman 2012). In
another incident reported by Channel 4, activists manipulated a video by adding
smoke, leading the Washington Post to ask in a headline, Are Syrian citizen journalists
embellishing the truth? (Syrias Video Journalists Battle to Tell the Truth 2012; Flock
2012).
Some citizen journalists attempted to repair the damage, adopting the values
and language of the international news media. They vowed to be more vigilant, mean-
ing they would domesticate themselves in ways that made their work acceptable to
outsiders. After quoting citizen reporters in one case admitting that they had intention-
ally over-inflated the number of defectors and the status of the siege of one city in
order to mislead the government, Yazbek (2012) notes, they later realized this was
would tarnish their credibility and vowed not to do so in the future.
In this way, they were clearly attempting to further professionalize. Thus, in their
attempts to conform to professional news norms and thus gain acceptance into those
larger information networks, some citizen journalists attempted to police themselves,
trying to develop systems to validate their content. Indeed, SNNs site claims that All
news with the hashtag #SNN has been verified and checked for credibility. Another
practice that some Syrian citizen journalists started following in order to establish credi-
bility was supplying the equivalent of a dateline for their videos. For example, in some
videos, citizen journalists hold up handwritten pieces of paper to indicate the date and
the place where the video was taken (Raziq 2012).
Likewise, the LCCs began to require more than one witness of any event before
they would report it; videos from unknown sources were confirmed by sending them
to locals in the area where the video purported to have been filmed to validate it;
death counts were based on video documentation or verification from locals (Miller
and Sienkiewicz 2012). When the Syrian government was accused of using chemical
weapons, the LCC reporters for that neighborhood were there on the scene, collecting
video evidence that would nearly bring the West into the conflict.
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Yet another practice the citizen journalist used to help them generate an interna-
tional audience and acceptance of their coverage was to translate Arabic into English,
with such work often done outside of the country by activists within the diaspora (see
Figure 3).
Groups such as SNN launched partner sites in English, and even began subtitling
some of its videos in English. The LCC also promised to translate all reporting within 24
hours for international news media who wanted to use it (Arnold 2012). Along with
these efforts, the Syrian activists tried to create professional-style divisions of labor, as
seen in the SNNs list of editorial staff and even with the smaller Baba Amros creation
of a Twitter account named @Press_Office00.
Nevertheless, the credibility of the citizen media remained an issue as video in
particular came to be seen as a weapon in the war (Lynch, Freelon, and Aday 2014,
9). Professional news outlets relied on ever-evolving verification systems (Harkin et al.
2012). For example, the New York Times used trusted Syrian activists as filters to priori-
tize citizen content used by their live blog, The Lede (Wall and El Zahed, 2014). In
addition, the New York Times also established a website, Watching Syrias War, that
posted citizen video and asked for crowd-sourcing to help verify it and supply addi-
tional details.
External Connectors
The Syrian pop-up news ecology benefited from being connected to outside
actors (individuals and organizations) who could provide material support and social
FIGURE 3
Some citizen news outfits created English-language versions of their sites, such as this
Facebook page by Shaam News Network
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capital. Two types of external connectors in particular served key roles: corporate social
media platforms along with diaspora activists.
Syrian citizen journalists took advantage of the built-in networking structure of
social media such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc., all of which are key nodes in
global information networks. This embrace of corporate media makes these activists dif-
ferent from earlier resistance efforts such as the Independent Media Center movement
of the late 1990s and early 2000s, which sought to create its own information architec-
ture (Downing 2003; Coyer 2005). The Syrians choice appears to have helped them
more easily interface and sometimes become part of global news flows, thus potentially
enhancing the credibility and reach of their new pop-up news ecology.
At the same time, some new media companies actively spoke out publicly
about Syrian activists using their tools. These comments sometimes were presented
as an attempt to honor or even aid the activists, although cynics might suggest they
were merely seeking publicity by highlighting their usage by the Syrians. For exam-
ple, when citizen journalist Rami al-Sayeed was killed in Homs, Bambuser, a live
streaming site that hosted his Syria Pioneer channel, noted his death on the company
blog in a post titled, We Mourn the Loss of a Very Brave Syrian Journalist (Eva
2012). In this way, the social media company connected the Syrian citizen network
into its own broader network of users and viewers. Likewise, the official blog for
YouTube noted his death was being covered on their CitizenTube channel (This
Weeks Top News on YouTube 2012).
If previous activists challenged corporate power through targeting powerful com-
mercial brands, here social media brands welcome activists using the activists street
credibility to buttress the corporate media companys own reputation. Of course, the
fact that the citizen journalists need to rely on these tools to reach a broader audience
seems to be an example of what Jin (2013, 146) has called platform imperialism, a
continuation of US dominance of communication infrastructure via new online software
and hardware companies.
A very different type of connector consisted of activist organizations and individu-
als intentionally sharing their own social and material capital in order to boost the
Syrian pop-up ecology. This included providing training and equipment such as satellite
phones, laptops, cameras, etc., as well as contacts and connections. An example of an
institutional connector is Avaaz, an advocacy network that worked with the Syrian
activists to amplify their access to global information streams, providing help with
issues such as how to safely protect their identities when uploading materials (Rundle
2012). In areas that the rebels control, activists have established media offices with
satellite connections and HD cameras, which are said to be funded by citizens of the
Gulf States (Citizen Journalists Coverage of Syrias War 2013).
Other connectors were individuals, frequently Syrian diaspora facilitating the dis-
semination of raw news captured by grassroots reporters. For example, activists in Syria
may produce a video that is uploaded to DropBox, which allows it to be collected by
diaspora activists who in turn upload it to YouTube or other social media (Kenner
2013). Other individual connectors have helped build systems within Syria. Rami Jarrah,
a Syrian who fled the country for his own safety, launched the Activists News Associa-
tion (ANA), an organization that aims to sustain the activist reporters within Syria. He
reported that ANA maintained a network of 350 Syrian citizen journalists, the best of
whom were meant to be paid about $400 a month (Arnold 2012). Rami himself has
SYRIAN CITIZEN JOURNALISM 11
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been interviewed by professional news media, treated as a bridge or connecting point
to the activists to the extent that some outlets such as the New York Times have relied
on his identification and assessment of citizen videos for their own content (Wall and El
Zahed, 2014). The effectiveness of these connectors is disputed. Some researchers iden-
tify them as valuable actors in translating the Syrian conflict into terms understandable
by the West, whereas others argue that Syrias lack of a developed civil society prior to
the conflict meant that they now lacked the ability to develop the sort of meaningful
connectors seen in Egypt and other Middle East revolutions (Della Ratta and Valeriani
2012; Ande n-Papadopoulos and Pantti 2013). Still others suggest that the connectors
tended to reinforce Western journalism values and pre-existing frames for what was
happening in Syria (Lynch, Freelon, and Aday 2014).
Conclusion
Before the Syrian civil war, the country had known only one media systemthat
controlled by the government to serve its authoritarian purposes. The small moves
toward liberalization in the early part of the twenty-first century were mainly cosmetic.
Because the media system was so tightly controlled, when the initial protests began at
the start of the region-wide Arab uprisings, they failed to gain a fair hearing or some-
times any hearing at all in the Syrian professional media. Thus, ordinary Syrians took up
their cellphones and video cameras, opened their YouTube, Facebook and Twitter
accounts, and began reporting the story.
What happened next was that an entirely new pop-up news system formed
which was able to connect successfully to global news networks. Dozens of activist
journalists became a new generation of street reporters, albeit ones with a revolution-
ary agenda. As the pop-up system grew, other oppositional voices arose, oftentimes
speaking for the armed rebels, leading at least some observers to suggest that the
street activists lost the ability to present a more palatable narrative to the West (Lynch,
Freelon, and Aday 2014).
Whatever the case, this new communications ecology has offered both Syrians
inside the country and the outside world different frames for viewing what was hap-
pening. By making their content accessible in forms such as YouTube videos, they
made it easier for outsiders to locate and consume their version of events as well as to
remediate and further disseminate the content via liking, sharing, reposting, etc. In fact,
the ease with which activists and rebels could post their counter points of view eventu-
ally created a cacophony of alternative voices that needed ever more curation in order
to focus attention.
The Syrian activists did become new nodes in the transnational circulation of
information; however, joining the global news network has not come without costs.
For some, the ultimate price was seen in the high number of citizen journalists deaths.
Other costs included the decision to deploy technology tools that corporations ulti-
mately control (something Castells mass self-communication concept does not really
address). One can operate a YouTube channel as a news distribution site, which pro-
vides a built-in means of more easily generating a global audience. At the same time,
YouTube and other social media may censor your work, as is evident in the take-down
notices for violation of terms of service for many of Syrias citizen journalists.
12 MELISSA WALL AND SAHAR EL ZAHED
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Finally, it is important to step back from this specific example to suggest that the
Syrian pop-up news ecology is an example of an on-going phenomenon, albeit one that
goes further than previous examples. The sudden appearance of a new pop-up news
network has been seen in Iraq just after the US invasion in 2003, when a plethora of inde-
pendent outlets appeared there, while 10 years later Burma saw a similar spurt of new
news outlets suddenly opening (Amos 2010; Ricchardi 2011; Crispin 2013). We posit that
a pop-up news ecology tends to appear in authoritarian countries that are experiencing
sudden and dramatic political changes. These new systems require a rapid learning curve
on the part of their creators who may need outside connectors to boost their work
through training or material assistance such as equipment. They are likely to be danger-
ous for those within the country who are creating them. That is because these systems
spring to life faster than the necessary legal and political apparatus to protect their rights
can develop, and because they are at heart driven by oppositional agendas. They are also
likely to struggle with issues of credibility, tacking between activism and professionalism,
and indeed may ultimately opt to disseminate propaganda, a strategy that may result in
disconnection from more powerful global networks.
In fact, we suggest that most pop-up news ecologies will be short-lived. They will
be incorporated into the existing system with a handful continuing to exist as opposi-
tion mouthpieces (or perhaps, in instances of a turnover in power, become the domi-
nant voices themselves), or they will simply be unable to sustain themselves
permanently. They will ultimately be drowned out or otherwise pushed down by exist-
ing media or even newer voices seeking to replace them. Whether this means Syria
now has the foundation for a potential system that allows more voices than the state
media historically have or whether this new pop-up news ecology will rapidly evapo-
rate leaving few markers of the changes outlined here, remains to be seen.
NOTES
1. At the same time, a handful of bloggers and independent journalists braved the
potential wrath of Syrias government to provide counter, sometimes critical,
views. While small, these changes may have seeded Syrias media ecosystem with
a new strain of journalism (Pies and Madanat 2011).
2. Historically, internet access in Syria been limited due to high costs and govern-
ment controls. In 2010, there was a 17.7 percent internet penetration rate, with
0.5 percent having broadband access (Pies and Madanat 2011). In 2005, only five
blogs were online, by 2010, the number was still below 100. The internet was clo-
sely monitored and often websites such as Facebook were blocked; downloads
from YouTube were so slow as to make it unusable.
3. We observed Arabic and English Facebook pages and YouTube channels of key
oppositional news producers (the second authors first language is Arabic);
searched news databases including Lexis-Nexis, ProQuest and Google News
Search to track the appearance and spread of the system; assessed published
interviews, taped and live appearances by journalists and activists addressing
aspects of this system. Additional context was derived from interviews with jour-
nalists in Beirut, Lebanon in 2012.
SYRIAN CITIZEN JOURNALISM 13
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4. Numbers based on frequency count of Facebook posts; number of videos embed-
ded into posts; and numbers of comments in April and March 2011 (as accessed
on the Arabic version of SNNs Facebook page [https://www.facebook.com/Shaam
NewsNetwork] in May 2013).
5. Searches for Shaam News Network were conducted in May 2013 in the databases
ProQuest Newsstand, Lexis-Nexis and Google News. The 17 countries were:
Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, Denmark, Dubai, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece,
India, Indonesia, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland and the United States.
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