Social Media Becoming Online Battlefield in Syriahttp://on.mash.to/PHziDs
Pete Cashmore Social media is often credited with helping spread the Arab Spring, as activists shared messages of discontent and organized protests using Facebook and Twitter. More than a year after the Arab Spring began in Tunisia, it has become a megaphone for propaganda from both sides of the struggle in conflict-ridden Syria.
Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are replete with propaganda from Syria — government forces and rebels have been using the networks to spar for the attention and support of the outside world. The Syrian government even has a division, the Syrian Electronic Army, assigned to the task.
“It’s not surprising that Syria has attempted to develop a cyber warfare capability,” John Bassett, senior fellow at London’s Royal United Services Institute, recently told Reuters. “It’s in line with their chemical and biological warfare program and their aspirations as a regional power.”
YouTube in particular is a prime example of the information war being waged alongside the real-world battle for Syria. Video is easily manipulated to serve one side or another. Either side may upload video of the same event, but framed completely differently: government forces might claim an explosion is the result of foreign terrorists’ activity, rebels might claim it was the righteous work of a Syrian freedom fighter.
“The government and the Free Syrian Army both take certain pieces of video and completely interpret them in different ways,” David Clinch, editorial director at Storyful and former editor at CNN’s international desk toldMashable.
With few journalists able to verify either side’s claims in Syria, online rumors have been flying fast and loose: a false Twitter account pretending to be a Russian minister reported the “death” of Syria’s president, leading to very real turbulence on global oil markets.
Some news outlets are trying to sort through the chaos: The New York Times, for example, has an ambitious project to sort through footage uploaded from Syria in an attempt to glean truth from hyperbole and fabrication called “Watching Syria’s War.”
