Syrian journalists covering the war: Assessing perceptions of fear and security

This article analyses the dangers and threats faced by Syrian journalists covering the conflict since the pro-democracy protests erupted in March 2011. While most Western research on the Syrian Revolution has focused on the working difficulties faced by correspondents, parachutists or foreign freelancers, this article scrutinizes the working conditions for Syrian content providers. Syrian journalists’ testimonials of fear and their perception of danger and vulnerability provide a humanistic lens not only on the scope of what revolution and war mean to many who have lived it and been transformed by it, but also on the reality of informing in dangerous contexts. The study contemplates the practitioners’ working risks and perceptions of fear and threats, as well as their personal security measurements. The characterization of fear during the militarization of the rebellion as a semi-normalized way of life, suggested by Pearlman’s article, ‘Narratives of fear in Syria’ (2016), allows the authors to place their study in a conceptual frame. The implementation of a survey answered by 82 Syrian journalists was complemented by semi-structured interviews with a selected group of 12 participants. In a context in which 86.6 percent of the respondents had colleagues who had died while working, the findings illustrate that Syrian reporters and media activists perceive their work as extremely dangerous. In the perception of fear, the adoption of personal safety measures by practitioners does not always contribute to decreasing it; the trauma experience can act both as a paralysing and empowering working factor.

Mourning the Nightingale’s Song: The Audibility of Networked Performances in Protests and Funerals of the Arab Revolutions

Given the salient role of embodied tactics in contemporary networked protests in performance, in this essay I listen for how the embodied sonic praxis of protests during the Arab revolutions translates into the audio, visual, and text modalities of digital media. I propose audibility, or the appearance and perceptibility of sound objects, as that which translates the “live” sound that occurs in physical spaces into representational spaces, and, in so doing, alters the temporality and spatiality of the sonic experience. Interrogating who and what are rendered audible as part of the political contestations that drive protest actions, I demonstrate how audibility is a technological condition, sensory force, and social process through which affective publics emerge in networked spaces. I begin with social media posts from the first months of non-violent protest actions in 2011, in Egypt and Syria, analyzing the translation of sonic objects into written texts that narrativize the subjects and spaces of the Arab revolutions. I then shift to the sonic praxis of revolutionary mourning in a discussion of the audibility of the crowd in footage of protest funerals that reclaimed martyrs of the Syrian revolution in 2018 and 2019, interrogating how the sounds of the crowd enable the mythologization of the martyrs’ bodies and help mobilize the cause for which they died. Both approaches to audibility – as expressing voice and documenting sounds – underscore how audibility, I argue, is crucial for understanding the affect-rich intensities that drive networked protest performances, and that forge political possibilities as imaginable, sensible, and perceptible.

Both Authors and Authored

Our Memory Belongs to Us (Rami Farah and Signe Byrge Sørensen, 2021) reunites three activists from a failed revolution—Rani, Yadan, and Odai—in a theatre in Paris in 2019, where codirector Rami Farah plays footage they’d shot themselves during the Syrian revolution. Farah’s approach is one of critical generosity, in which the activists are made to reflect on their images from the past from the perspective of the present. As explored by Stefan Tarnowski in this essay, the resulting documentary directly addresses the activists’ ability to drive political transformations and assemble publics of humanitarian concern through image circulation.

Kondisi Sosial Rakyat Suriah Pasca Revolusi 2011 Dalam Novel Ayyām Fī Bābā ‘Amrū Karya Abdullah Maksūr: Analisis Sosiologi Sastra

Ayyām fī Bābā 'Amrū novel by Abdullah Maksūr is one of novels that came out after the Arab Spring that hit Syria. The revolution in Syria occurred because of the people's desire to overthrow al-Assad regime which had been in power for decades. Demonstrations in Syria then ended into a civil war that never ended until now. This novel takes the story of the condition of Syrian society after the Syrian revolution erupted in 2011 and describes the conflict between the military and the Syrian people. This study aims to reveal the social conditions experienced by Syrians of the Syrian revolution based on data in the Ayyām fī Bābā 'Amrū novel, the social reality of Syrian society, and the relationship between the structure of the text and the social reality of Syrian society. The theory used in this study is Alan Swingewood's the sociology of literature theory with the concept that literary work is a mirror of the age. The method used is the literary of sociology method which is a moving method of literary data. The results of this study indicate that there are several causes of the Syrian revolution mentioned in the novel, such as the desire to be free from a regime that has been in power for decades, corruptions, inspired by other Arab countries, and a long-held hatred. The social conditions experienced by the Syrian people during the revolution were experiencing intimidation from the military, the people were arrested without any fault, some Syrians were tortured in military prisons, shootings, bombings and chaos in several cities, some girls experienced sexual harassment, the people were divided between supporting the regime or opposition, and most Syrians flee to neighboring countries. The social condition that occurs in the novel is a representation of the social reality that occurred in Syrian society after the revolution in 2011.

Media Bias: A Corpus-based Linguistic Analysis of Online Iranian Coverage of the Syrian Revolution

This study explores the influence of a government’s ideology on linguistic representation in a news agency that characterizes itself as independent. It focuses on the coverage of the Syrian civil war as reported by the Iranian news agency Fars, addressing the discursive constructions of anti-government powers in relevant online reports released between 2013 and 2015. Since the Islamic Republic of Iran was a major regional ally of the Syrian government, we questioned the extent to which ideological independence could be expected during a politically critical time frame. Taking a corpus-based linguistic approach, the study explores the semantic macrostructures representing the opposition as well as the lexical clusters and keywords characterizing the news discourse. The findings indicate that Fars’ representation of the Syrian Revolution was, to some extent, biased, despite its claimed independence of the government’s political stance. It excluded the Sunni social actors, suppressed the Islamic faction identity of the rebels and depicted the uprising as a war against foreign-backed militants. The rebels were stereotyped in terms of terrorism and non-Syrians. In addition, the analysis reveals Fars’ tendency to emphasize the power of the government, depicting it as the defender of the Arab land and foregrounding the discourse of international conspiracy against Syria. The results of this work project the dimension of media bias caused by the underpinning political perspective of media institutions.

Political discourse of President Bashar Al-Assad after the Syrian revolution (analytical vision)

Purpose There is no doubt that the political speech of the Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad is of exceptional importance in understanding the developments of the war in Syria, and clarifies the position of all parties involved in the war, whether local, regional or international. Accordingly, and based on the dismantling of political discourse, the identification of its core, as well as its variables and major themes of this discourse, this study aims to understand the levels of complexity, paths and the fate of the war in Syria that certainly does not come free of charge, the hardest of which is the human cost whether for the victims or the displaced persons. Design/methodology/approach After a careful study of all the resilient factors in the literature review to categorize the primary data based on Assad’s discourses in the media, through a “qualitative research study” of his “interviews and discourses,” it is found that the Assad’s rhetoric is highly relevant to his tenacious presidency. The research reveals the themes that dominated Assad’s interview responses and speeches and his strategy of framing the revolution as a foreign insurgency against his government. In fact, Assad delegitimizes any semblance of the uprisings as a “pro-democracy movement” or “revolution,” denying the presence of a rebellion against his government. Findings By the analysis the study found out that Bashar Al-Assad continued to focus on certain reasons and issues that led to the crisis and the continuation of the war, such as the Muslim Brotherhood’s involvement, considering the Syrian opposition abroad as agents of Western countries, Syria is subject to a regional and international conspiracy, terrorism is a major scourge that must be fought and that the army is essential in resolving the battles taking place there. Likewise, emphasizing the internal dialogue with all stakeholders and involved parties is the way to solve the crisis.The Syrian President’s speeches do not focus much on the accusations against his regime from the opposition or the international parties involved in the conflict. Originality/value Assad’s resiliency has made him a distinct leader in the region. This paper analyzes the factors contributing to Assad’s resiliency. The literature review consists of the existing theories on authoritarian persistence and Assad’s power base in particular. The literature review discusses the factors that helped Assad adopts his resiliency strategies to the conflict environment. The research focuses on how Assad used the media as a platform for displaying his own manipulative narrative of the conflict. It concludes that Assad’s use of the media as his propaganda tool legitimized his rule, making it highly relevant to his persistence.

The Hakawati’s Daughter: How the Syrian revolution inspired a rewrite

In 2009, I was living in Damascus, Syria, writing The Hakawati’s Daughter. The film told the story of the last remaining hakawati, oral storyteller, in Damascus. Like many traditions in the Arab world, the hakawati profession is an inherited one, passed on through the generations since 600 AD from father to son and so on. But in my film, the last hakawati has only one child, a daughter, and rather than adapting/modernizing this tradition and passing it on to her, he allows it to die. Two years later, the Syrian revolution broke out and the story, along with the country, fell apart. I have spent the years since reimagining what the story could be instead. Prior to the revolution, what interested me was how the film would explore the battle between tradition and modernity. What interests me today is ‘who has the right to tell the narrative of what is happening in Syria?’ Sadly, it is mostly men. This is the theme The Hakawati’s Daughter now wishes to explore. This article is an account of how the Syrian revolution inspired the rewriting of The Hakawati’s Daughter.