In the midst of a virtual blackout on the city of Hama, citizen videos - often shaky and unverifiable - document the brutality of the Syrian military's crackdown on the city, ongoing since July 31 - the day before the start of Ramadan - while online campaigns, hosted on Facebook and Twitter, aim to draw attention to events on the ground. The narrative: Syrians are suffering and want the world to take notice.
At the same time, and often on the same networks, a different story can be seen, as Syrians in favour of the Assad regime stake out online ground in attempt to shift the narrative in their favour. And though there are individuals who post supportive sentiments about Assad, the overwhelming majority of pro-regime content online appears well-coordinated; the work of organised groups coming together to support the beleaguered president.
The Syrian electronic army
Tunisia's Ben Ali promised a more open internet just one day before he was ousted. In Egypt, Mubarak sought a different strategy, shutting down the majority of the internet for a week in the hopes of disabling activist networks. Syria has taken a different approach to the internet altogether, first unblocking popular social networking sites, then throwing support to pro-regime hackers in the hopes of countering opposition forces online.
As Helmi Noman has documented, the Syrian Electronic Army - a cabal of hackers, acknowledged as a positive force by Assad himself in a June 20 speech - has overtaken certain Facebook pages, such as those belonging to French and US presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and Barack Obama, TV talk show host Oprah Winfrey, and the page for ABC News and flooding them with comments like "we love Bashar al-Assad" and "I live in Syria, stop lying, nothing is happening in Syria".
More recently, the group has targeted the US Department of Treasury, in light of US government plans to impose further sanctions on the Syrian regime.
In addition to flooding Facebook pages, it has coordinated hacking attempts from their own Facebook page, and have defaced or disabled a number of websites. Although Facebook has removed a number of their pages, a quick search of the site brings up numerous new ones, suggesting a strong sense of determination.
Though the "electronic army" doesn't seem to have much of a presence on Twitter, other groups vie for influence there by flooding popular hashtags with largely irrelevant content, such as photographs of the Syrian landscape, often accompanied by other, unrelated hashtags...
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Jillian C. York @'Al Jazeera'
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