The role of social media platforms in Syria's demise

There is no doubt that media outlets, mainly social media platforms played a major role in the Syrian crisis whether by supporting it or undermining it.  

This double-edged sword was used to document all the crimes committed by the regime and opposition fighters as well as fabricate lies and positions that undermined their credibility.    

On YouTube for example, we saw Aleppo’s Berri family massacre flaunted by Syria’s rebels, and on Facebook, we read about the verbal attack launched by actress May Scaff against Hezbollah and her call for Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah to pay her the money she spent on Lebanese refugees during the 2006 July war.     

Besides the crimes committed by the rebels or their partisans, there are ongoing attempts to either undermine or otherwise flaunt the revolution through videos, pictures and fabricated news. The story of Zaynab al-Hosni is an example. Zaynab's death was blamed on the Syrian Army at the end of 2011 spurring media frenzy only to later be discredited through an interview on Syrian State TV.     

Cartoonist Ali Farzat also slandered al-Arabiyya’s reporter Alia Ibrahim by describing her as “a Shiite correspondent working as a soldier for Assad’s reconnaissance squadron and revealing information about the Free Syrian Army".      

To top it all, a video clip was fabricated for a song promoting the fall of Hezbollah at the hand of the Free Syrian Army, citing LBCI as the creator of the aforementioned video. The quality of audiovisual content proves the inauthenticity of the video as does the clip-on logo depicting LBCI’s emblem.     

The question remains constant; what is the purpose behind such acts which degrade a revolution that may have otherwise pulled Syria out of its political mire?       


For the full LBCI report, watch the video above