Armchair outrage

Aleppo has been one of the highest trending news on social media in the United States for a while now. People express anger, sadness, disappointment; they like and share; they tweet. And what of it? Nothing changes in Aleppo.

At the same time, across the ocean, in the US, there has been a heated discussion about the major role social media played in the recent elections. So why is it that social media can help win an election in one country and cannot stop a month-long massacre in another?

Indeed, social media hurt the Syrian uprising. It gave the Syrian people the hope that the old dictatorship can be toppled just by uploading videos of protests and publishing critical posts. But with a society under constant and pervasive surveillance, how could the Syrians develop a mature political opposition?

In March 2011, it looked easy to be in opposition on        Facebook; it was a great platform for those who wanted to protest. The Facebook page ‘Syrian Revolution’ was just a click away and its followers quickly grew above 100,000. What few people knew in Syria was that the administrator was actually a Syrian living in the safety of Sweden and that only      35 percent     of those liking the page were Syrians actually living in Syria.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the numbers turning up sometimes at scheduled protests were low. Many were waiting for a huge sit-in to be in Umayyad Square in the heart of Damascus, or at least in Abaseen Square near the big stadium. It never happened.

Social media also limited social movements to only one tactic: street demonstrations. Crowds of protesters were easy targets for killing (live ammunition was widely used) and mass arrests, quickly shrinking the numbers of those willing to come out.

The use of social media also made activists and regular protesters highly vulnerable. When the regime allowed direct access to Facebook – which had been only accessible through VPN until then – in February 2011, it was clear that it is doing so to facilitate surveillance and the targeting of the protest movement.

Many   were arrested for just sharing a photo, commenting or uploading a video. Facebook-organised protests also allowed the regime to know in advance the location and prepare its crack-down accordingly.

More importantly, social media created the illusion that one can change and challenge the events on ground by being active online. Aleppo has been severely bombed since September 2015 with the Russian intervention. This year, when news erupts that the situation is catastrophic, thousands of Syrians around the world protest … by changing their Facebook profile picture.

People react virtually while not much is changing on the ground. The number of actual protests on the ground for Syria had declined by 2013. The feeling that social media gives you that you’ve done your bit by posting online is one reason for this demobilisation.

In this regard, Syria is like Palestine, where calls for a third Intifada have not materialised into actions, despite the growing number of Israeli violations.

In fact, this trend is obvious, not just in the Middle East, but globally. In the 1990s, before the advent of social media, around 70 percent    of nonviolent social movements succeeded while this number plummeted to only 30 percent in the Facebook and Twitter era.

Social media, of course, is not the only reason why the Syrian uprising failed. But it is something that Syrian revolutionaries should think about when thinking about the future of their movement.

Facebook posts cannot defeat an unscrupulous dictator armed with a brutal repressive apparatus and resolved to use it at will.

The article has been excerpted from: ‘How Facebook hurt the Syrian Revolution’.

Courtesy: Aljazeera.com