Open AccessBehind the Screen: the Syrian Virtual Resistance
Author(s) -
Brownlee Billie Jeanne
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
cyberorient
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1804-3194
DOI - 10.1002/j.cyo2.20171102.0001
Subject(s) - dissent , resistance (ecology) , political dissent , politics , middle east , collective action , cyberspace , political science , contentious politics , social media , political economy , resilience (materials science) , spanish civil war , media studies , sociology , social movement , law , the internet , ecology , physics , world wide web , computer science , biology , thermodynamics
Six years have gone by since the political upheaval that swept through many Middle East and North African (MENA) countries begun. Syria was caught in the grip of this revolutionary moment, one that drove the country from a peaceful popular mobilisation to a deadly fratricide civil war with no apparent way out. This paper provides an alternative approach to the study of the root causes of the Syrian uprising by examining the impact that the development of new media had in reconstructing forms of collective action and social mobilisation in pre-revolutionary Syria. By providing evidence of a number of significant initiatives, campaigns and acts of contentious politics that occurred between 2000 and 2011, this paper shows how, prior to 2011, scholarly work on Syria has not given sufficient theoretical and empirical consideration to the development of expressions of dissent and resilience of its cyberspace and to the informal and hybrid civic engagement they produced.