New Media and Revolution: Resistance and Dissent in Pre-Uprising Syria

Abstract

Brownlee opens her book New Media and Revolution: Resistance and Dissent in Pre-Uprising Syria, which is based on her PhD thesis, by tracing the new era of popular mobilization in the Middle East. The work's narrative goes up to June 2009 in Iran, when the results of the elections angered the Iranian people and led to the Green Movement protests that disappeared quickly after facing a massive repression campaign by the Iranian regime. Almost two years later, similar movements took place, first in Tunisia, then spreading to many Arab states under the name Arab Spring (3–4). In light of this, the regional and tribal divisions between eastern and. western Libyans, the sectarian divisions, and accumulated tensions between minority and majority in Syria and Bahrain meant that several of these uprisings led to civil war and a sectarian strife. The author calls these Arab Spring uprisings “revolutions,” including the one in Syria (4), without defining this concept and what a “revolution” really means, and without examining whether this definition fits with the Syrian context—as the title of the book might suggest.The book is divided thematically, into six chapters. The first chapter is an introduction, and chapters 2, 3, 4, and 5 focus on the pre-uprising period, while the last chapter focuses on the post-2011 Syrian uprising. In the introductory first chapter, Brownlee presents the book's central thesis: in the decade that proceeded the uprising in Syria—since President Bashar al-Asad's inheritance of Syria in 2000 from his late father, until 2010—a certain type of silent resistance movement formed in Syria. This period was accompanied by economic, social, and institutional changes in the country, which were generated after the process of opening (infitah) that Bashar initiated (13). Chapter 2 assesses the emergence of new forms of media, especially Internet and social media, which Brownlee had expected to contribute to the creation of a resistance movement and to replace traditional social gathering centers such as cafés, universities, and group meetings. In chapter 3 she analyses the transformation in the traditional forms of media that produced a limited improvement in the margin of freedom and the quality of journalism.Chapter 4 examines the impact of new media and the changes to the structure (institutions) and the agents (people) that were generated by it. Chapter 5 introduces the effects of the aid and support of international actors on the new media, namely, their attempt to adopt a new strategy to promote democracy in authoritarian countries like Syria. Finally, chapter 6 looks at new media in the post-uprising period after 2011 and examines how these tools became not only a source for information, but also a type of weapon used by all belligerents in the Syrian conflict.The book is based on two years of field research in the Middle East, one year in Syria before the uprising (2008–9) and one year after the uprising in Lebanon (2013–14), as well as trips to Turkey and Jordan (31). However, the book fails to mention whether the author's observations on the impact of the new media, especially in the pre-uprising period, focused on big cities like Damascus—she does mention that she stayed in Damascus to study the language and to conduct the research but does not detail whether she also examined its impact in rural, remote, and undeveloped areas. Arguably, the impact of the new media arrived later in such places and was less influential; yet this population's mobilization and militancy in the Syrian uprising was more intense.The book's argument about the silent movement (2000–2010), which predated the Syrian uprising, does not explain the domino effect on Syria coming from the other states in the region, nor why Syrians were the last to mobilize after the Tunisians, Libyans, Yemenites, Bahrainis, and the Egyptians, and why Syria's uprising occurred after the fall of most of the leaders of these countries. Just before the uprising began, Bashar al-Asad felt confident enough to declare to Western media that Syria is different from other nations in the Middle East. Another question that remains unanswered is why most of the opposition and many of its prominent figures who were asking the Syrian people to protest and to mobilize against the regime during this passive period were coming from outside Syria, and mainly from Europe and the United States.In addition, contrary to the author's argument, the silent resistance movement did not start after 2000. This resistance has always been active in Syria, in the form of jokes about the president and sectarian and political issues; it was present also in people's gatherings and discussion away from the eyes and the ears of security services. In addition, people were aware of what was happening in their country and in the wider world, despite the state-controlled media, because they listened to international radios such as BBC-Arabic, Israel Voice, and Monte Carlo, which were providing relatively accurate information about Syria. Hence, it is arguable that the role of social media in organizing the dissidents before the 2011 uprising was limited and it constituted, rather, an informative role due to the fear and the extreme surveillance by the state's security services. This organizational role of the new media became prominent only after the beginning of the uprising when the regime lost control in some areas.Although Brownlee rejects Alan George's interpretation that the critics in media and television series were more like “safety valves,” in my view his interpretation is more accurate than Brownlee's view that these series are a sort of political resistance (41). What George and other researchers call safety valves is known by Syrians as tanfis (a strategy used by the regime to manage the sociopolitical stress and anger). This tanfis might include sacrificing and sacking some of the state's officials every now and then, and then blaming them for all of the states' corruption and misery. In this manner, the state has managed organized criticism through television series and movies since the 1980s and 1990s. For example, the Maraya series created by Yasser al-Azma and those written by Muhammad al-Maghut and Duraid Lahham, such as Wadi al-Musk, Wain al-Ghalt, al-Taqrir, al-Hudud and others, all criticized corruption and they were no less vocal than Buqat Dawʾ which began in 2001 (one of the series mentioned by the author). They were similar to the recent series, but all produced under the control of the state's apparatuses and follow certain red lines.Equally important, the author does not address who “Syrians” are in her book. As we know, Syria is a multi-ethnic multiconfessional country; the book overlooks this angle. If the book is about all Syrians, it assumes that the pre-uprising silent resistance movement (2000–2020) influenced all the population equally. If this is the case, then the uprising of 2011 should have actively and quantitatively included all the Syrians regardless of their sectarian and ethnic ties. However, this was not the case—how do we explain that Alawis, Christians, Druses, and Ismaʾilis did not participate actively in the uprising (apart from few opportunist activists linked or sponsored by international actors and some opposition figures)? Likewise, what was the impact of this pre-uprising movement on the Kurds who represent 10–14 percent of the Syrian population? The author does not ask or answer the question of why they distanced themselves in general from the “Syrian” uprising.Further, the main Facebook page that called for the Syrian revolution against Bashar al-Asad was later renamed Syrian Revolution and was administrated by a son of a Syrian Muslim Brotherhood leader based in Sweden. Hence, the Islamist influence and role and the sectarian problem cannot be ignored. The page was established, according its page's (transparency) record on Facebook, on January 10, 2010, which is almost a year before the death of Mohamad Bouazizi in Tunisia on January 4, 2011, which is usually presented as the trigger of the so-called Arab Spring. This shows that, despite well-presented arguments about the development of media, it is possible that the external factors played a far more important role in paving the way for the uprising. Having said this, the modernization or the upgrading of the authoritarian regime, which was accompanied by a series of developments, possibly led, as the book suggests, to this uprising. Nonetheless, the accumulation of sectarian tensions since the presidency of the late Hafez al-Asad provided the necessary fuel for this uprising and allowed external actors to manipulate it to forward their own interests among a certain portion of the Syrian population before and after the uprising.Moreover, the uprising was almost exclusive to Arabic-speaking Sunnis, who represented 68–70 percent of the Syrians even in the early days of the peaceful uprising. Mosques, for example, were used by the protestors to organize and to gather after Friday prayers, and children in the Sunni-majority city of Derʿa famously wrote anti–Bashar al-Asad slogans, not kids from a Christian-majority town like Maʿloula, or the Alawi-majority city of Qardahah.Another important point is that the book mistakenly mentions a declaration by Sheikh al-Qaradawi, in which according to the book he “declared jihadi war against the Syrian regime and its Shiʿa support base” (182), which he defined as “more infidels than Christians and Jews.” However, al-Qaradawi declared jihad in this statement in May 2013 on the heterodox Nusayris (Alawis) who are in fact the real Syrian regime support-base and he called Nusayris more infidels than Christians and Jews based on fatwa (Islamic decree) by Ibn Taymiyyah (d. 1328). Moreover, while al-Qaradawi asked in the same statement for the “Muslims” (i.e., Sunnis) to go to Syria to fight Hezbollah, he did not excommunicate the orthodox Twelver Shiʿas.Brownlee rightly mentions that the new media helped the Syrians not to remain unnoticed, as had happened in 1982 when the regime committed a massacre resulting in the killing of 20,000–40,000 people in Hama (6). Indeed, thanks to the new media, they were noticed this time; nonetheless, this did not impede the regime from killing, torturing, imprisoning, and displacing millions of Syrians. The picture is deplorably sad; yet Brownlee hopes that once the conflict is over the new media will play a more important role, that is, to heal the wounds of the war-torn country and unite the Syrians (187).To summarize, the book succeeds in its originality, and as a powerfully in-depth analysis that provides new insights on the Syrian uprising by focusing on the role of media in general and the new media in particular in setting the stage for the uprising in 2011. Brownlee delivers a rich literature review, a structured thesis, solid arguments, and an excellent theoretical framework. Brownlee's investigation of the Syrian media will be of special interest to scholars who work on the role of the new media in popular mobilization, or who wish to consider the Syrian uprising from a different perspective.