News from the Levant: A Qualitative Research on the Role of Social Media in Syrian Diaspora

Abstract

The Syrian emergency, with around 6.7 million people leaving the country, is considered the biggest refugee crisis since the end of World War II. The impact of social media on both the representation of the crisis and immigrants’ behavior has been already analyzed in several works. In this context, the article contains the results of qualitative research on the use of social media by Syrian immigrants and refugees after the civil war and in the diaspora. By mainly focusing on young users, we completed 44 in-depth interviews: 22 in-person interviews in Jordan; 13 in-person interviews in Lebanon; and 9 interviews with immigrant and refugees in Turkey via Skype (for logistical reasons). The article is dedicated to three different uses of social media: collecting news regarding the war in Syria; rediscovering lost ties after the diaspora; and finally, the so-called resettlement or the organization of a new life in host countries. As to the findings, immigrants have been shown to use social media for all purposes, but to a very different degree. In addition, and more interestingly, the results revealed some blind spots of digital sociability, such as the lack of credible sources and the Balkanization brought about by the so-called Web 2.0.