This art icle was downloaded by: [ Melissa Wall] On: 27 February 2015, At : 13: 43 Publisher: Rout ledge I nform a Lt d Regist ered in England and Wales Regist ered Num ber: 1072954 Regist ered office: Mort im er House, 37- 41 Mort im er St reet , London W1T 3JH, UK Digital Journalism Publicat ion det ails, including inst ruct ions f or aut hors and subscript ion inf ormat ion: ht t p: / / www. t andf online. com/ loi/ rdij 20 Syrian Citizen Journalism a Melissa Wall & Sahar el Zahed b a Depart ment of Journalism, Calif ornia St at e Universit y—Nort hridge, USA b Islamic St udies, Universit y of Calif ornia at Los Angeles, USA. Email: Published online: 25 Jul 2014. Click for updates To cite this article: Melissa Wall & Sahar el Zahed (2014): Syrian Cit izen Journalism, Digit al Journalism, DOI: 10. 1080/ 21670811. 2014. 931722 To link to this article: ht t p: / / dx. doi. org/ 10. 1080/ 21670811. 2014. 931722 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTI CLE Taylor & Francis m akes every effort t o ensure t he accuracy of all t he inform at ion ( t he “ Cont ent ” ) cont ained in t he publicat ions on our plat form . However, Taylor & Francis, our agent s, and our licensors m ake no represent at ions or warrant ies what soever as t o t he accuracy, com plet eness, or suit abilit y for any purpose of t he Cont ent . Any opinions and views expressed in t his publicat ion are t he opinions and views of t he aut hors, and are not t he views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of t he Cont ent should not be relied upon and should be independent ly verified wit h prim ary sources of inform at ion. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, act ions, claim s, proceedings, dem ands, cost s, expenses, dam ages, and ot her liabilit ies what soever or howsoever caused arising direct ly or indirect ly in connect ion wit h, in relat ion t o or arising out of t he use of t he Cont ent . This art icle m ay be used for research, t eaching, and privat e st udy purposes. Any subst ant ial or syst em at ic reproduct ion, redist ribut ion, reselling, loan, sub- licensing, syst em at ic supply, or dist ribut ion in any form t o anyone is expressly forbidden. Term s & Downloaded by [Melissa Wall] at 13:43 27 February 2015 Condit ions of access and use can be found at ht t p: / / www.t andfonline.com / page/ t erm sand- condit ions SYRIAN CITIZEN JOURNALISM A pop-up news ecology in an authoritarian space Downloaded by [Melissa Wall] at 13:43 27 February 2015 Melissa Wall and Sahar el Zahed The Syrian revolution has brought about the creation of a pop-up news ecology, an entirely new, oppositional news system fueled by citizen activists’ use of social media to report on the conflict. Drawing on Castell’s Network Society, this essay assesses the ways such a system came into being, finding a dearth of professional journalism, rapidity of its formation, and assistance by external “connectors” as key factors. This case study provides a potential model for the ways pop-up news ecologies may form in other authoritarian countries. KEYWORDS Arab Spring; citizen journalism; network society; social media; Syria; war Introduction Syria’s news media system has historically been tightly managed by the government, which allows it little freedom to report. While Syrians are able to get outside news via satellite, domestic journalists have always answered to the Syrian regime. Openly critical journalists frequently had to leave the country and report from neighboring Lebanon or further abroad (Najjar 2004). Foreign reporters who ventured to Syria were often assigned minders and had their movements tracked. When Syrians joined the Arab Spring that erupted across the region in 2011, reporting via cellphone and video camera on their own uprising, the country’s repressive news environment received a large jolt. Within weeks, new, alternative online news sites—often consisting of nothing more than a Facebook page or YouTube account sporting a self-created logo—were covering the country’s outbreak of dissent, reporting the opposition’s side of events and criticizing the regime. In a short time, the country was blanketed with a new layer of reporting (Battah 2012; Harkin et al. 2012). The changed information environment was nothing short of remarkable. While parts of this emergent system included satellite television channels set up by dissidents and others outside the country and newspapers distributed by hand within Syria, this new information ecosystem operated primarily online via social media. Selftrained reporters, often amateur citizen journalists and activists, shared with domestic and global audiences visceral images and accounts of the government crackdown on a growing protest movement and then an even more bloody response to an armed resistance movement. As Syrian activist Rami Nakhla has said, “Social media … overthrew Digital Journalism, 2014 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2014.931722 Ó 2014 Taylor & Francis Downloaded by [Melissa Wall] at 13:43 27 February 2015 2 MELISSA WALL AND SAHAR EL ZAHED the censorship system” (“Groundtruth: New Media, Technology and Syria” 2012). Syria suddenly found itself being reported on by an unsanctioned, oppositional news system. The appearance of this system was stunning in breadth and speed. It was not until 2001 that Syria had even allowed the opening of privately owned newspapers (Pies and Madanat 2011). While the reporters for the private newspapers had begun to develop a sense that their roles were not to propagandize for the state but to be useful to Syria’s citizens, they were still mostly unwilling to challenge the regime, with their stories often vetted by the Ministry of Information (Starr 2012).1 Private broadcasting arrived even more recently in 2006, but it was subject to even stricter controls, while Facebook was banned until 2011 (Pies and Madanat 2011).2 Locally produced news focused on a limited range of official sources in the capital of Damascus. The other major cities—Aleppo, Homs, Hama and Latakia—had only one local newspaper each, and all of these were government run (Battah 2012). Yet within a period of months, an entirely new news system had been built: a pop-up news ecology consisting of new news outlets, new news collectors and a new activist-derived perspective on the news. This was not an evolutionary change with media outlets slowly opening, and a legal system establishing press freedoms evolving over decades, if not centuries; instead, this was a sudden, dramatic disruption. Multiple nodes covering much of the country made this new system national in scope, even giving a voice to the opposition in smaller locations traditionally ignored by the state media. It provided a counter-representation of important events, making it different from what one would historically have seen from Syria’s domestic media, although remaining opinionated (Dawisha 2013). It involved multiple actors representing different constituencies, many operating individually or in small groups. By 2012, observers could note, “Every city has a media office … every street has reporters” (Battah 2012, 52). Certainly, activist media are not new to the Middle East. One of the dominant journalism modes in the region has been one of opinion, which frequently takes political or sectarian sides, and a resistance media that opposes outside aggression or imperialism (Kraidy 1998; Harb 2011). Even Al Jazeera, which has been seen as a groundbreaking “voice for Arab opposing views,” is identified as a “forum for resistance” that has been particularly active in covering the Arab uprisings (Zayani 2012, 2; Lynch 2013). Previous research has detailed how small-scale resistance media have been embraced by various actors within the region during periods of conflict (Sreberny-Mohammadi and Mohammadi 1994; Harb 2011). More recently, the rise of what Castells (2009) has called mass self-communication or participatory media within the Middle East has also been viewed as a significant change to the region’s media environment (Khamis, Gold, and Vaughn 2012; Lim 2012). Yet many of these internet-based efforts have tended to be the work of individuals (Ramsay and Riegert 2012). Syria’s new news ecology created an entire system producing activist-fueled content for domestic consumption as well as international audiences. We characterize this system as a “pop-up news ecology,” a term used to capture the speed with which it has appeared and its contingent nature. Our overall aim in this essay is to identify the characteristics of this new news system, however ephemeral it may prove to be, that have enabled it to become part of the global news network and the ways it may, as Allan (2012, 25) puts it, reconfigure “the geometry of informational power in the ‘network society.’” In doing so, we draw on Castell’s (2009) articulation of SYRIAN CITIZEN JOURNALISM the concepts of communication power and networks as they intersect with journalism, creating what Heinrich (2011) has called “network journalism,” a form of news with particular importance at “the intersections” of information nodes between amateurs and professionals (vii). Downloaded by [Melissa Wall] at 13:43 27 February 2015 Network Power and Journalism The analytical framework for this essay draws on the idea that the emergence of new digital communications which are global in reach and interactive in nature have fundamentally changed and continue to change all aspects of society (Castells 1996). In other words, the network form is the key organizing structure of today with communication technologies crucial enablers of its existence. While the rise of network society has been interpreted by some to mean horizontal social relations in which power is equally dispersed (the so-called “flat earth” of Friedman [2005, 169] and others), Castells (2009) warns against such a simplification. Networks do not mean equality in terms of access; instead, some actors are included and others excluded, a process that is not determined by technology divides per se but more broadly by prior social structures’ distribution of power (Castells 2009). Also often overlooked is the existence of different networks (e.g., military versus media networks) and, within these, the ways certain nodes become more central than others, further evidence that power remains unevenly distributed even within what may seem to be an equalizing form (Castells 2009; van Dijk 2012). Thus, it is important to note that those who want to gain power within the network must in some cases fight to gain a space and then to hold onto it (van Dijk 2012). Specifically, Castells (2009, 47) argues that power comes from the ability to (1) configure a network or the ability to (2) become “switches” between networks. Those actors seeking to create “counter power,” must reprogram existing networks and/or disrupt the dominant switches (Castells 2009, 431). Reprogramming a communication network means changing cultural codes, or more broadly, the ways reality is perceived and responded to. Castells (2009, 70) argues that this can occur through the processes of mass self-communication, which is “self generated,” “self directed” and even “self selected” in its reception. In his formulation, mass self-communication is harnessed by social movements and other insurgent actors who use participatory media to create, distribute and consume new cultural codes. Even so, insurgents must further seek to incorporate their new frames of understanding into global information networks. That is, to create an alternative network may not be enough to obtain meaningful amounts of power; that network must also successfully interface and influence other, larger more powerful networks so as to enhance the insurgent actor’s inclusion within broader public spaces. That may mean adapting to the language and norms of the existing system in an act of what Castells (2009, 302) characterizes as potential “servitude” to the more powerful forces controlling the networks. Even then, none of these processes guarantees success. After all, existing networks primarily serve the most powerful and maintaining that power is the priority of those who benefit from it. Further complicating this phenomenon is the fact that these networks are not static; instead, the high-speed velocity at which communication networks operate make all networks unstable (van Dijk 2012). The acceleration of social relations may enable or disable attempts to change existing networks. 3 4 MELISSA WALL AND SAHAR EL ZAHED Downloaded by [Melissa Wall] at 13:43 27 February 2015 Networked Journalism and Mass Self-communication The concepts of a network society and mass self-communication have both been employed effectively by researchers seeking to explain fundamental changes taking place within journalism. Heinrich (2011, vii) suggests we have seen the emergence of “networked journalism,” arguing that there is a “dense information net spanning the globe” and the interactive qualities of its nodes create a “decentralized news sphere characterized by non-linear news flows.” She sees networked communication structures as flattening the differences between larger corporate media and smaller, more activist outfits in terms of access to information and its distribution, and puts a special emphasis on the ways less-established news nodes may benefit from the network structure. Similarly, Russell (2011, 1) writes that networked journalism allows “members of various publics [to] make journalism material that intersects, mixes, and is distributed to a new heightened degree.” Along the same lines, the concept of mass self-communication has been applied to citizen media, particularly citizen journalism (Allan 2012). Matheson and Allan (2009) viewed networked journalism as it intersected with war reporting by focusing on bloggers, an established line of research that appears to fit with Castell’s concept. They argue that networked journalism “combines to form information networks which may, potentially, reorder the social distribution of power” (107). Yet used in this context, it can suggest an atomized individual action (a solo blogger comments on an event or a citizen journalist snaps a photo of an earthquake) that is incorporated into the larger global flow of information and news. It does not bring to mind an entire alternative system in which multiple actors are acting in concert or at least in parallel, such as has erupted in Syria. We interpret the Syria case in this essay as a more intentionally connected, more densely networked effort. In what follows, we first lay out how the network came into being, then answer the question: What aspects of the Syrian pop-up news network have aided in its inclusion in global news flows?3 The Rise of a Pop-up News Ecology In the spring of 2011, the first beats of a new news system pulsed across Syria. As citizens protested against President Bashar al Assad’s regime, the state media refused to give them a voice, and instead labeled them terrorists and “armed gangs” who needed to be eliminated (Lesch 2012, 101; Yazbek 2012). In response, demonstrators attempted to document the nascent protest movement themselves. These new content creators and distributors were often young, part of a new generation of Syrian youth under the age of 25, who make up some 60 percent of the country’s 22 million people (Lesch 2012). Monitoring protests, then later shootings, bombings, etc., activists collected information via cellphones or video cameras, documenting what was happening in towns across the country. They posted this information online, often to social media sites such as Facebook. Most of these early content creators were not trained as reporters and had no journalism experience; they were “‘just guys with laptops’” and could be inconsistent and unprofessional in producing content, including blurring activism with their reporting and failing to behave ethically (Kenner 2013). Others, such as citizen journalist Downloaded by [Melissa Wall] at 13:43 27 February 2015 SYRIAN CITIZEN JOURNALISM Rami al-Sayed, who was shot dead in Homs in February 2012, began adapting to professional norms. Al-Sayed was said to have posted 800 videos from the conflict before he died (“Syrian Citizen Journalist Rami al-Sayed Dies” 2012). As the clashes between the regime and its opponents became increasingly violent, the alternative pop-up news system became more widespread. Within weeks of the start of the Syrian uprising, multiple online news collection and distribution sites had been created by Syrian opposition members. Some became established sources of information for audiences inside and outside of the country. Among the first organized citizen reporters were those working for the Local Coordinating Committees (LCC), political groups made up of thousands of activists found in nearly every city and town who operated at the neighborhood level (Sawah 2011; Rundle 2012). The LCCs prioritized creating media content. Their reporting teams relied on the work of professional journalists as well as those with no journalism experience (“Syrian Journalists and Activists” 2012). LCC members reported in 2012 that they were running “70 reporting committees throughout Syria which, in addition to organizing street actions, conduct detailed daily body counts, confirm individual deaths through families, eye-witnesses or by personally identifying the bodies of those killed” (Arnold 2012). Almost all citizen media groups employed Facebook and YouTube as their key online platforms; other sites such as Twitter and the live video-streaming platform Bambuser were also regularly used. Together, the activists used Western commercial sites to create an alternative, oppositional news system, one which helped them connect in turn with powerful, global information networks. In particular, Syrian citizen content became an important part of the conflict’s coverage by the region’s Pan-Arab satellite news channels, which actively solicited citizen contributions. Citizen reporting also became a frequent source within the communication networks of the West’s most powerful news providers (Harkin et al. 2012). Yet the pop-up system remained at heart oppositional, seemingly a Syrian iteration of Harb’s (2011, 228) “liberation propaganda” model in the Levant. In documenting the conflict, citizen journalists were motivated by activism, which on several occasions led to ethical problems with what they produced (Mackey 2012; Salama 2012). Our assessment suggests that the following key factors helped Syria’s citizen journalists inject their voices into the global and local information streams:    The existence of a domestic information vacuum. Most professional reporters within Syria were mouthpieces for the government. During the early stages of the conflict, international reporters were either barred from entry or so heavily monitored or under threat of violence once inside Syria as to make it almost impossible for them to work there. This created a need for a different news system to keep people informed. A high-speed birth. Aided by easy to use technological tools and global platforms such as YouTube, Syrian oppositional outlets formed and were producing and distributing information exceptionally quickly. This speed met the news needs of people within Syria and news providers outside of the country. The system was not planned but spontaneous and thus nodes sprang up rather than waiting for a grand plan to call the reporting to life. Adaptation to professional norms of international journalism. This ranged from mimicking professional news branding to learning professional information 5 6 MELISSA WALL AND SAHAR EL ZAHED  collection practices. Some activists curated or promoted the work of others to international news outlets and audiences. Assistance from external connectors. Actors and organizations outside the country, particularly diaspora or exiled Syrians, boosted the alternative network’s social and material capital in ways that were necessary for these domestic nodes to have a chance to connect with larger global information networks. Downloaded by [Melissa Wall] at 13:43 27 February 2015 Filling an Information Vacuum Reporting in and from Syria has never been easy, whether for domestic or international reporters. As the conflict continued and became more violent, the act of reporting for international journalists (as well as Syrian citizen journalists) became increasingly dangerous. In 2011, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported two confirmed journalist deaths; in 2012, 28 were confirmed killed for their reporting (“70 Journalists Killed in 2012” n.d.). In 2013, the British newspapers The Times, Guardian and Observer announced that they would no longer accept photographs from freelancers working in Syria because it was considered too dangerous to report from and, thus, accepting freelancer’s work would be unethical (Turvill 2013). (Although they later quietly reversed themselves.) Journalism and human rights groups labeled Syria one of the most dangerous countries in the world to report from (“Syria: Journalists Deliberately Targeted” 2013). If professional international journalists did go into Syria, they put those they spoke to at risk. Some believed this was morally unacceptable as well as unproductive. This meant that international news outlets’ reporting of the conflict became increasingly limited to reporting from locations outside of Syria. Syrian citizen journalists stepped into this breach, providing information that might otherwise never have been reported. Likewise, the arrival of news operations at local levels such as Douma City news, based in the city of the same name, meant that towns historically ignored by Syria’s professional news media were suddenly being reported on by activist reporters (Arnold 2012; “Syrian Journalists and Activists” 2012). These self-created news outlets directly challenged the government’s attempt to control information circulating inside and outside of the country, offering new frames for talking about what was happening in Syria and demonstrating how actors could speak for and about themselves. Amnesty International declared that “without citizen journalists reporting from their neighborhoods, often at great risk to their own safety, news of many of the abuses, including crimes against humanity and war crimes, might never have reached the outside world” (“Shooting the Messenger” 2013, 5). Clearly, the exceptionally dangerous conditions for reporting in Syria have contributed to the rise of new Syrian news producers. An Accelerated Birth Within the first weeks of dissent, activists had created online presences that they specifically used to disseminate news and information collected by citizen reporters. These ranged from the particularly successful Shaam News Network (SNN), which was founded February 28, 2011 to a city-focused outlet, ANN (Aleppo News Service), which launched its Facebook page on March 27, 2011. Downloaded by [Melissa Wall] at 13:43 27 February 2015 SYRIAN CITIZEN JOURNALISM SNN provides a particularly clear example of how this system sprang to life. With Facebook and YouTube as key tools, SNN became a high-profile actor within the new network of information providers arising within Syria (see Figure 1). In the first two months of its establishment, SNN’s Arabic-language Facebook site had 495 posts. Content included 242 videos. Some were embedded productions from professional media, especially BBC Arabic, some from activists.4 However, SNN increasingly ran original content. While it is not possible to definitively know if its decision to rely heavily on video helped propel it to international attention, this seems likely as video has been characterized as the key storytelling form of the Middle East uprisings (Sasseen 2012). The site immediately engaged an audience, generating 38,316 comments in two months. Meanwhile, its YouTube channel has reached more than 53 million views and more than 74,723 subscribers as of May 2014. The accelerated development of SNN and its almost instantaneous generation of an audience illustrate the speed with which individuals practicing Castell’s mass selfcommunication helped to form the new national news system. Of course, simply establishing a social media account, for example, with YouTube is not enough. SNN built its audience quickly in part because it was consistently providing fresh content that was otherwise unavailable. For domestic audiences, their content featured views and information that the heavily censored state media would not even admit existed (Harkin et al. 2012; Starr 2012). Syrians have reported that SNN was one of their key local information sources within the country (Janbek and Cambell 2013). It is important to remember as well that SNN was merely one node in the Syrian pop-up news system, although certainly one of the most successful in terms of reach. FIGURE 1 Shaam News Network’s YouTube channel 7 Downloaded by [Melissa Wall] at 13:43 27 February 2015 8 MELISSA WALL AND SAHAR EL ZAHED Another high-profile node in the nascent network was Ugarit News, which had more than 59,000 subscribers as of May 2014. Ugarit’s YouTube channel launched on April 2, 2011. Other well-known news collectors were hyper-local such as the Baba Amro News Network (see Figure 2), a neighborhood in Homs whose Facebook page was started in 2012, or Lattakia News Network named for the coastal city in which it operated, which started its Facebook channel on June 2, 2011. Within six months of its launch, SNN content was being regularly shared globally and its images were being used in international news coverage. It appears to have first been used as a source of information about the Syria conflict by international media in April 2011, when the Christian Science Monitor and Wall Street Journal attributed information about the uprising to the site. They identified SNN as an opposition “Facebook Page” and “protest site,” respectively (Blanford 2011; Malas and Lauria 2011). By the end of April 2011, a little over two months after the site launched, USA Today ran an Associated Press story using SNN video and a still photograph grabbed from a video, calling it in a cutline, “amateur video” that was “released by Shaam News Network, a Syrian freedom group” (“Western Powers Push” 2011). The next month, well-known New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman had singled out SNN as “the go-to site for video from the Syrian uprising” (Friedman 2011). News outlets in at least 17 countries5 had used SNN’s content within half of a year. This includes the New York Times, Germany’s Die Tageszeitung and Switzerland’s Radio Television Suisse. Most of these outlets used images from SNN’s video or still photographs; some like USA Today and France’s L’Express directly embedded SNN video. Emblematic of its acceptance, in July 2011, the Washington Post ran a photo from a Hama protest that thanked Al Jazeera and SNN for their coverage of the uprising, thus suggesting an equivalency for some Syrian news audiences (or activists at least) between the established global satellite broadcaster and the newly established citizen newsroom. FIGURE 2 Baba Amro is a neighborhood in Homs, a Syrian city that has faced repeated violence between the government and rebels. This is the Facebook page for citizen journalists who report on that neighborhood SYRIAN CITIZEN JOURNALISM Downloaded by [Melissa Wall] at 13:43 27 February 2015 Adapting to Professional Norms Some of Syria’s citizen journalists showed an awareness and even a desire to conform to certain norms of professional journalism, and this seems to have contributed to their being able to gain admission to global news flows. Their adaptations ranged from the stylistic to the practical. In terms of the former, many of these newly established sites created their own logos, which they embedded into their video and sometimes other iterations of their social media presence. In its earliest days, SNN was already embedding its own logo on content (primarily videos of protests). One of the founders of another Syrian pop-up reporting outfit, Deir Press Network, said that the logo distinguished their site so that viewers could easily find their videos to both watch and also as a place to contribute content: “[W]e came up with a logo that we posted on each video. We had protesters in the beginning of videos carry signs with our names and with websites where you could upload your videos anonymously” (Thiemann 2012). Beyond attempting to look professional, however, the citizen journalists faced more basic issues around the credibility of their actual reporting. Several high-profile instances came to light, suggesting that they were recycling content from previous events or even staging news. In one case, the BBC used an image purporting to be from an activist documenting the Houla massacre; this turned out to have been a photograph taken by a professional photojournalist in 2003 in Iraq (Silverman 2012). In another incident reported by Channel 4, activists manipulated a video by adding smoke, leading the Washington Post to ask in a headline, “Are Syrian citizen journalists embellishing the truth?” (“Syria’s Video Journalists Battle to Tell the ‘Truth’” 2012; Flock 2012). Some citizen journalists attempted to repair the damage, adopting the values and language of the international news media. They vowed to be more vigilant, meaning they would domesticate themselves in ways that made their work acceptable to outsiders. After quoting citizen reporters in one case admitting that they had intentionally over-inflated the number of defectors and the status of the siege of one city in order to mislead the government, Yazbek (2012) notes, they later realized this was would tarnish their credibility and vowed not to do so in the future. In this way, they were clearly attempting to further professionalize. Thus, in their attempts to conform to professional news norms and thus gain acceptance into those larger information networks, some citizen journalists attempted to police themselves, trying to develop systems to validate their content. Indeed, SNN’s site claims that “All news with the hashtag #SNN has been verified and checked for credibility.” Another practice that some Syrian citizen journalists started following in order to establish credibility was supplying the equivalent of a dateline for their videos. For example, in some videos, citizen journalists hold up handwritten pieces of paper to indicate the date and the place where the video was taken (Raziq 2012). Likewise, the LCCs began to require more than one witness of any event before they would report it; videos from unknown sources were confirmed by sending them to locals in the area where the video purported to have been filmed to validate it; death counts were based on video documentation or verification from locals (Miller and Sienkiewicz 2012). When the Syrian government was accused of using chemical weapons, the LCC reporters for that neighborhood were there on the scene, collecting video evidence that would nearly bring the West into the conflict. 9 Downloaded by [Melissa Wall] at 13:43 27 February 2015 10 MELISSA WALL AND SAHAR EL ZAHED FIGURE 3 Some citizen news outfits created English-language versions of their sites, such as this Facebook page by Shaam News Network Yet another practice the citizen journalist used to help them generate an international audience and acceptance of their coverage was to translate Arabic into English, with such work often done outside of the country by activists within the diaspora (see Figure 3). Groups such as SNN launched partner sites in English, and even began subtitling some of its videos in English. The LCC also promised to translate all reporting within 24 hours for international news media who wanted to use it (Arnold 2012). Along with these efforts, the Syrian activists tried to create professional-style divisions of labor, as seen in the SNN’s list of editorial staff and even with the smaller Baba Amro’s creation of a Twitter account named @Press_Office00. Nevertheless, the credibility of the citizen media remained an issue as video in particular came to be seen as a “weapon” in the war (Lynch, Freelon, and Aday 2014, 9). Professional news outlets relied on ever-evolving verification systems (Harkin et al. 2012). For example, the New York Times used trusted Syrian activists as filters to prioritize citizen content used by their live blog, “The Lede” (Wall and El Zahed, 2014). In addition, the New York Times also established a website, “Watching Syria’s War,” that posted citizen video and asked for crowd-sourcing to help verify it and supply additional details. External Connectors The Syrian pop-up news ecology benefited from being connected to outside actors (individuals and organizations) who could provide material support and social Downloaded by [Melissa Wall] at 13:43 27 February 2015 SYRIAN CITIZEN JOURNALISM capital. Two types of external connectors in particular served key roles: corporate social media platforms along with diaspora activists. Syrian citizen journalists took advantage of the built-in networking structure of social media such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc., all of which are key nodes in global information networks. This embrace of corporate media makes these activists different from earlier resistance efforts such as the Independent Media Center movement of the late 1990s and early 2000s, which sought to create its own information architecture (Downing 2003; Coyer 2005). The Syrians’ choice appears to have helped them more easily interface and sometimes become part of global news flows, thus potentially enhancing the credibility and reach of their new pop-up news ecology. At the same time, some new media companies actively spoke out publicly about Syrian activists using their tools. These comments sometimes were presented as an attempt to honor or even aid the activists, although cynics might suggest they were merely seeking publicity by highlighting their usage by the Syrians. For example, when citizen journalist Rami al-Sayeed was killed in Homs, Bambuser, a live streaming site that hosted his Syria Pioneer channel, noted his death on the company blog in a post titled, “We Mourn the Loss of a Very Brave Syrian Journalist” (Eva 2012). In this way, the social media company connected the Syrian citizen network into its own broader network of users and viewers. Likewise, the official blog for YouTube noted his death was being covered on their CitizenTube channel (“This Week’s Top News on YouTube” 2012). If previous activists challenged corporate power through targeting powerful commercial brands, here social media brands welcome activists using the activist’s street credibility to buttress the corporate media company’s own reputation. Of course, the fact that the citizen journalists need to rely on these tools to reach a broader audience seems to be an example of what Jin (2013, 146) has called “platform imperialism,” a continuation of US dominance of communication infrastructure via new online software and hardware companies. A very different type of connector consisted of activist organizations and individuals intentionally sharing their own social and material capital in order to boost the Syrian pop-up ecology. This included providing training and equipment such as satellite phones, laptops, cameras, etc., as well as contacts and connections. An example of an institutional connector is Avaaz, an advocacy network that worked with the Syrian activists to amplify their access to global information streams, providing help with issues such as how to safely protect their identities when uploading materials (Rundle 2012). In areas that the rebels control, activists have established media offices with satellite connections and HD cameras, which are said to be funded by citizens of the Gulf States (“Citizen Journalists’ Coverage of Syria’s War” 2013). Other connectors were individuals, frequently Syrian diaspora facilitating the dissemination of raw news captured by grassroots reporters. For example, activists in Syria may produce a video that is uploaded to DropBox, which allows it to be collected by diaspora activists who in turn upload it to YouTube or other social media (Kenner 2013). Other individual connectors have helped build systems within Syria. Rami Jarrah, a Syrian who fled the country for his own safety, launched the Activists News Association (ANA), an organization that aims to sustain the activist reporters within Syria. He reported that ANA maintained a network of 350 Syrian citizen journalists, the best of whom were meant to be paid about $400 a month (Arnold 2012). Rami himself has 11 12 MELISSA WALL AND SAHAR EL ZAHED Downloaded by [Melissa Wall] at 13:43 27 February 2015 been interviewed by professional news media, treated as a bridge or connecting point to the activists to the extent that some outlets such as the New York Times have relied on his identification and assessment of citizen videos for their own content (Wall and El Zahed, 2014). The effectiveness of these connectors is disputed. Some researchers identify them as valuable actors in translating the Syrian conflict into terms understandable by the West, whereas others argue that Syria’s lack of a developed civil society prior to the conflict meant that they now lacked the ability to develop the sort of meaningful connectors seen in Egypt and other Middle East revolutions (Della Ratta and Valeriani 2012; Andén-Papadopoulos and Pantti 2013). Still others suggest that the connectors tended to reinforce Western journalism values and pre-existing frames for what was happening in Syria (Lynch, Freelon, and Aday 2014). Conclusion Before the Syrian civil war, the country had known only one media system—that controlled by the government to serve its authoritarian purposes. The small moves toward liberalization in the early part of the twenty-first century were mainly cosmetic. Because the media system was so tightly controlled, when the initial protests began at the start of the region-wide Arab uprisings, they failed to gain a fair hearing or sometimes any hearing at all in the Syrian professional media. Thus, ordinary Syrians took up their cellphones and video cameras, opened their YouTube, Facebook and Twitter accounts, and began reporting the story. What happened next was that an entirely new pop-up news system formed which was able to connect successfully to global news networks. Dozens of activist journalists became a new generation of street reporters, albeit ones with a revolutionary agenda. As the pop-up system grew, other oppositional voices arose, oftentimes speaking for the armed rebels, leading at least some observers to suggest that the street activists lost the ability to present a more palatable narrative to the West (Lynch, Freelon, and Aday 2014). Whatever the case, this new communications ecology has offered both Syrians inside the country and the outside world different frames for viewing what was happening. By making their content accessible in forms such as YouTube videos, they made it easier for outsiders to locate and consume their version of events as well as to remediate and further disseminate the content via liking, sharing, reposting, etc. In fact, the ease with which activists and rebels could post their counter points of view eventually created a cacophony of alternative voices that needed ever more curation in order to focus attention. The Syrian activists did become new nodes in the transnational circulation of information; however, joining the global news network has not come without costs. For some, the ultimate price was seen in the high number of citizen journalists’ deaths. Other costs included the decision to deploy technology tools that corporations ultimately control (something Castell’s mass self-communication concept does not really address). One can operate a YouTube channel as a news distribution site, which provides a built-in means of more easily generating a global audience. At the same time, YouTube and other social media may censor your work, as is evident in the take-down notices for violation of terms of service for many of Syria’s citizen journalists. Downloaded by [Melissa Wall] at 13:43 27 February 2015 SYRIAN CITIZEN JOURNALISM Finally, it is important to step back from this specific example to suggest that the Syrian pop-up news ecology is an example of an on-going phenomenon, albeit one that goes further than previous examples. The sudden appearance of a new pop-up news network has been seen in Iraq just after the US invasion in 2003, when a plethora of independent outlets appeared there, while 10 years later Burma saw a similar spurt of new news outlets suddenly opening (Amos 2010; Ricchardi 2011; Crispin 2013). We posit that a pop-up news ecology tends to appear in authoritarian countries that are experiencing sudden and dramatic political changes. These new systems require a rapid learning curve on the part of their creators who may need outside connectors to boost their work through training or material assistance such as equipment. They are likely to be dangerous for those within the country who are creating them. That is because these systems spring to life faster than the necessary legal and political apparatus to protect their rights can develop, and because they are at heart driven by oppositional agendas. They are also likely to struggle with issues of credibility, tacking between activism and professionalism, and indeed may ultimately opt to disseminate propaganda, a strategy that may result in disconnection from more powerful global networks. In fact, we suggest that most pop-up news ecologies will be short-lived. They will be incorporated into the existing system with a handful continuing to exist as opposition mouthpieces (or perhaps, in instances of a turnover in power, become the dominant voices themselves), or they will simply be unable to sustain themselves permanently. They will ultimately be drowned out or otherwise pushed down by existing media or even newer voices seeking to replace them. Whether this means Syria now has the foundation for a potential system that allows more voices than the state media historically have or whether this new pop-up news ecology will rapidly evaporate leaving few markers of the changes outlined here, remains to be seen. NOTES 1. 2. 3. At the same time, a handful of bloggers and independent journalists braved the potential wrath of Syria’s government to provide counter, sometimes critical, views. While small, these changes may have seeded Syria’s media ecosystem with a new strain of journalism (Pies and Madanat 2011). Historically, internet access in Syria been limited due to high costs and government controls. In 2010, there was a 17.7 percent internet penetration rate, with 0.5 percent having broadband access (Pies and Madanat 2011). In 2005, only five blogs were online, by 2010, the number was still below 100. The internet was closely monitored and often websites such as Facebook were blocked; downloads from YouTube were so slow as to make it unusable. We observed Arabic and English Facebook pages and YouTube channels of key oppositional news producers (the second author’s first language is Arabic); searched news databases including Lexis-Nexis, ProQuest and Google News Search to track the appearance and spread of the system; assessed published interviews, taped and live appearances by journalists and activists addressing aspects of this system. Additional context was derived from interviews with journalists in Beirut, Lebanon in 2012. 13 14 MELISSA WALL AND SAHAR EL ZAHED 4. 5. Numbers based on frequency count of Facebook posts; number of videos embedded into posts; and numbers of comments in April and March 2011 (as accessed on the Arabic version of SNN’s Facebook page [https://www.facebook.com/Shaam NewsNetwork] in May 2013). Searches for Shaam News Network were conducted in May 2013 in the databases ProQuest Newsstand, Lexis-Nexis and Google News. The 17 countries were: Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, Denmark, Dubai, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, India, Indonesia, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland and the United States. Downloaded by [Melissa Wall] at 13:43 27 February 2015 REFERENCES Allan, Stuart. 2012. “Citizen Journalism and the Rise of ‘Mass Self-Communication’: Reporting the London Bombings.” In Citizen Journalism: Valuable, Worthless or Dangerous? edited by Melissa Wall, 11–26. New York: IDebate Press. Amos, Deborah. 2010. Confusion, Contradiction and Irony: The Iraqi Media in 2010. Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy Discussion Paper Series D-58, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. http://dash.harvard. edu/bitstream/handle/1/4421401/Amos_IraqiMedia.pdf?sequence=1. Andén-Papadopoulos, Kari, and Marvi Pantti. 2013. “The Media Work of Syrian Diaspora Activists: Brokering between the Protest and Mainstream Media.” International Journal of Communication 7: 2185–2206 Arnold, David. 2012. “Syria: A War Reported by Citizen-Journalists, Social Media.” Middle East Voices, June 29. http://middleeastvoices.voanews.com/2012/06/syria-a-war-reported-bycitizen-journalists-social-media-41863/. Battah, Habib. 2012. “The Media Revolutions of the Arab Spring.” Bold: The News of Power, June. Blanford, Nicholas. 2011. “Syria’s Military Shows Signs of Division Amid Crackdown.” The Christian Science Monitor, April 25. http://search.proquest.com/docview/863269854?ac countid=7285. Castells, Manuel. 1996. The Rise of the Network Society, Volume I of the Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Castells, Manuel. 2009. Communication Power. London: Oxford University Press. “Citizen Journalists’ Coverage of Syria’s War via YouTube, Twitter ‘Unexplored Territory’.” 2013. The National, October 21. http://www.thenational.ae/world/middle-east/citizenjournalists-coverage-of-syrias-war-via-youtube-twitter-unexplored-territory#page1. Coyer, Kate. 2005. “If It Leads It Bleeds: The Participatory Newsmaking of the Independent Media Centre.” In Global Activism, Global Media, edited by Wilma De Jong, Martin Shaw, and Neil Stammers, 165–178. London: Pluto Press. Crispin, Shawn. 2013. “Burma Falters, Backtracks on Press Freedom.” Committee to Protect Journalists. http://www.cpj.org/reports/2013/06/burma-falters-backtracks-on-press-free dom-1.php. Dawisha, Adeed. 2013. The Second Arab Awakening: Revolution, Democracy and the Islamist Challenge from Tunis to Damascus. New York: W. W. Norton. Ratta, Della, and Augusto Valeriani. 2012. “Remixing the Spring! Connective Leadership and Read-Write Practices in the 2011 Arab Uprisings.” CyberOrient. http://www.cyberorient. net/article.do?articleId=7763. Downloaded by [Melissa Wall] at 13:43 27 February 2015 SYRIAN CITIZEN JOURNALISM van Dijk, Jan. 2012. The Network Society. 3rd ed. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Downing, John D. 2003. “The Independent Media Center Movement and the Anarchist Socialist Tradition.” In Contesting Media Power: Alternative Media in a Networked World, edited by Nicholas Couldry and James Curran, 243–257. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Eva. 2013. Bambuser Official Blog, February 21. http://blog.bambuser.com/2012/02/wemourn-loss-of-very-brave-syrian.html. Flock, Elizabeth. 2012. “Are Syrian Citizen Journalists Embellishing the Truth?” Washington Post, March 27. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/are-syrian-citi zen-journalists-embellishing-the-truth/2012/03/27/gIQAPaoMeS_blog.html. Friedman, Thomas. 2005. The Earth is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Friedman, Thomas L. 2011. “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” New York Times, May 22. http://search.proquest.com/docview/867938569?accountid=7285. “Groundtruth: New Media, Technology and the Syria Crisis.” 2012. “U.S. Institute of Peace’s.” Blogs & Bullets Initiative, October 12 [Webcast.]. http://www.usip.org/events/ground truth-new-media-technology-and-the-syria-crisis. Harb, Zahera. 2011. Channels of Resistance in Lebanon: Liberation Propaganda, Hezbollah and the Media. London: IB Tauris. Harkin, Juliette, Kevin Anderson, Libby Morgan, and Briar Smith. 2012. Deciphering UserGenerated Content in Transitional Societies. Philadelphia: Center for Global Communication Studies, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania. Heinrich, Ansgard. 2011. Networked Journalism: Journalistic Practice in Interactive Spheres. New York: Routledge. Janbek, Dana, and Madeline Otis Campbell. 2013. “Case Study: Communicating the Syrian Crisis.” A paper presented to the annual meeting of the International Association for Mass Communication Research, Dublin, June 25–29. Jin, Dal Y. 2013. “The Construction of Platform Imperialism in the Globalization Era.” TripleC 11 (1): 145–172. http://www.triple-c.at. “70 Journalists Killed in 2012/Motive Confirmed.” n.d. Committee to Protect Journalists. http://www.cpj.org/killed/2012/. Kenner, David. 2013. “The Witnesses.” Foreign Policy. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/ 2013/08/29/youtube_syria. Khamis, Sahar, Paul B. Gold, and Katherine Vaughn. 2012. “Beyond Egypt’s ‘Facebook Revolution’ and Syria’s ‘YouTube Uprising’: Comparing Political Contexts, Actors and Communication Strategies.” Arab Media and Society 15. http://www.arabmediasociety.com/?article=791. Kraidy, Marwan. 1998. “Broadcasting Regulation and Civil Society in Postwar Lebanon.” Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 42 (3): 387–400. Lesch, David W. 2012. Syria; The Fall of the House of Assad. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Lim, Merlyna. 2012. “Clicks, Cabs, and Coffee Houses: Social Media and Oppositional Movements in Egypt, 2004–2011.” Journal of Communication 62 (2): 231–248. Lynch, Marc. 2013. Arab Uprisings: The Unfinished Revolutions of the New Middle East. New York: Public Affairs. Lynch, Marc, Deen Freelon, and Sean Aday. 2014. Syria’s Socially Mediated Civil War. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace. Mackey, R. 2012. “Report Shows Syrian Video Activists at Work, Breaking Some Rules.” New York Times, March 28. http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/28/report-shows-syr ian-video-activists-at-work-breaking-some-rules. 15 Downloaded by [Melissa Wall] at 13:43 27 February 2015 16 MELISSA WALL AND SAHAR EL ZAHED Malas, Nour, and Joe Lauria. 2011. “Nations Face Quandary in Syria; Activists Describe Escalating Military Crackdown as Global Community Tries to Sway Assad Regime.” Wall Street Journal (Online), April 26. http://search.proquest.com/docview/863508721?accountid=7285. Matheson, Donald, and Stuart Allan. 2009. Digital War Reporting. Cambridge: Polity. Miller, James, and Matt Sienkiewicz. 2012. “Straight News from the Citizens of Syria.” Columbia Journalism Review, August 16. http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/straight_ news_from_the_citizen.php?page=all. Najjar, O. A. 2004. “The Middle East and North Africa.” In Global Journalism: Topical Issues and Media Systems, edited by Arnold S. de Beer and John C. Merrill, 257–298. Boston, MA: Pearson. Pies, Judith, and Phillip Madanat. 2011. Media Accountability Practices Online in Syria: An Indicator for Changing Perceptions of Journalism. Finland: University of Tampere. Ramsay, Gail, and Kristina Riegert. 2012. “Activists, Individualists, and Comics: The CounterPublicness of Lebanese Blogs.” Television & New Media 14 (4): 286–303. doi:10.1177/ 1527476412463447. Raziq, Abdul. 2012. “Syrian Citizen Journalists Risk All to Bring Stories from the Frontlines.” PR Watch. May 28, http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/05/11507/syrian-citizen-journal ists-risk-all-bring-stories-frontlines. Ricchiardi, Sherry. 2011. “Iraq’s News Media after Saddam: Liberation, Repression and Future Prospects.” Center for International Media Assistance. http://cima.ned.org/publications/ iraq%E2%80%99s-news-media-after-saddam-liberation-repression-and-future-prospects. Rundle, Michael. 2012. “Their Most Effective Weapon: Activists Arming Syrians with Cameras, Not Rifles.” Huffington Post. March 6. http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/02/23/ their-most-effective-weapon-syria-avaaz_n_1296058.html. Russell, Adrienne. 2011. Networked: A Contemporary History of News in Transition. Malden, MA: Polity Press. Salama, Vivian. 2012. “Covering Syria.” The International Journal of Press/Politics 17 (4): 516–526. Sasseen, Jane. 2012. The Video Revolution. Washington, DC: Center for International Media Assistance. http://cima.ned.org/sites/default/files/Video%20revolution%20FINAL.pdf. Sawah, Wael. 2011. “Syria’s New Political Player.” Observatory of Euro-Mediterranean Politics. http://www.iemed.org/observatori-en/arees-danalisi/arxius-adjunts/copy_of_focus-en/ 67-sawah.pdf. “Shooting the Messenger: Journalists Targeted by All Sides in Syria.” 2013. Amnesty International. http://www.amnesty.org.uk/uploads/documents/doc_23181.pdf. Silverman, C. (2012, May 28). BBC Mistakenly Uses Image of Iraq. Poynter. http://www.poynter. org/latest-news/regret-the-error/175307/bbc-mistakenly-uses-image-of-iraq-in-syrianmassacre-story/. Sreberny-Mohammadi, Annabelle, and Ali Mohammadi. 1994. Small Media, Big Revolution: Communication, Culture, and the Iranian Revolution. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Starr, Steven. 2012. Revolt in Syria: Eye-Witness to the Uprising. New York: Columbia University Press. “Syria: Journalists Deliberately Targeted as Country Becomes Most Dangerous in World for Reporters.” 2013. Amnesty International, May 3. http://www.amnesty.org.uk/news_de tails.asp?NewsID=20759. “Syria’s Video Journalists Battle to Tell the Truth.” 2012. Channel 4, March 27. http://www. channel4.com/news/syrias-video-journalists-battle-to-tell-the-truth. Downloaded by [Melissa Wall] at 13:43 27 February 2015 SYRIAN CITIZEN JOURNALISM “Syrian Citizen Journalist Rami al-Sayed Dies During Homs Shelling.” 2012. The World. February 22, http://www.theworld.org/2012/02/syrian-citizen-journalist-rami-al-sayyed-diesduring-homs-shelling/. “Syrian Journalists and Activists Capture 2012 Netizen Prize.” 2012. Reporters without Borders, March 12. http://en.rsf.org/syrie-syrian-citizen-journalists-and-12-03-2012,42093.html. Thiemann, Danny. 2012. “In Syria, ‘Holding a Camera is a Death Sentence’.” Guernica, March 14. http://www.guernicamag.com/daily/danny_thiemann_holding_a_camer/#.T2hKD2TG5U.twitter. “This Week’s Top News on YouTube: Journalists Killed in Homs, Soldiers Killed in Afghanistan Riots, Buenos Aires Train Crash.” 2012. YouTube Official Blog, February 24. http://you tube-global.blogspot.com/2012/02/this-weeks-top-news-on-youtube.html. Turville, W. 2013. “Broadsheets Back Sunday Times Decision to Decline Syrian Freelance Pics.” Press Gazette, February 19. http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/broadsheets-back-sundaytimes-decision-decline-freelance-submissions-syria. Wall, Melissa, and Sahar El Zahed. 2014. “Embedding Content from Syrian Citizen Journalists: The Rise of the Collaborative News Clip.” Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism. doi:10.1177/1464884914529213. Western Powers Push for End to Syria Crackdown. 2011. USA Today, April 29.http://usato day30.usatoday.com/news/world/2011-04-25-syria-unrest.htm. Yazbek, Samar. 2012. A Woman in the Crossfire; Diaries of the Syrian Revolution. London: Haus Publishing. Zayani, Mohamed. 2012. “Arab Media Studies Between the Legacy of a Thin Discipline and the Promise of New Cultural Pathways.” In Arab Cultural Studies: Mapping the Field, edited by Tarik Sabry, 55–78. London: IB Tauris. Melissa Wall (author to whom correspondence should be addressed), Department of Journalism, California State University—Northridge, USA. E-mail: melissawall@ gmail.com. Web: bit.ly/melissawall Sahar el Zahed, Islamic Studies, University of California at Los Angeles, USA. E-mail: sahar.el.69@gmail.com 17