{"id":328,"date":"2013-06-21T12:17:10","date_gmt":"2013-06-21T16:17:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/?p=328"},"modified":"2013-07-17T10:41:11","modified_gmt":"2013-07-17T14:41:11","slug":"syrian-citizens-launch-memes-and-throw-shoes-in-viral-internet-campaign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/2013\/06\/21\/syrian-citizens-launch-memes-and-throw-shoes-in-viral-internet-campaign\/","title":{"rendered":"Syrian Citizens Launch Memes and Throw Shoes in Viral Internet Campaign"},"content":{"rendered":"

Syria\u2019s tech-savvy and socially engaged citizens are resisting the state in creative ways. Conflict is never black and white, and in today\u2019s ever-more-connected world, attempts to address conflict are often quite colorful. This was evident earlier this month when Chinese bloggers morphed a classic photo<\/a> of citizen resistance from Tiananmen Square, changing a line of government tanks into a parade of big yellow ducks. The image was powerful and provocative; thus the role of the meme in Chinese social media<\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Syrian citizens\u2019 imaginations are also playing out colorfully on the Internet. Taking a closer look at the nuances of Syria\u2019s resistance movement can help us complicate the oversimplified and often exoticized picture of people and events in the Middle East that is presented in popular media. In a recent article for Jadaliyya<\/a>, Berkman fellow and researcher Donatella Della Ratta<\/a> suggests, \u201cAs much as images of violence, civil war, and sectarian strife become prominent in the media narrative of the Syrian uprising, little gems of innovative cultural production, artistic resistance, and creative disobedience continue to sprout across the virtual alleys of the Internet.\u201d<\/p>\n

So what does a civil society movement on the Internet look like in a time of civil war?\u00a0 In the case of the “I am with Syria”<\/a> campaign, it looks much like a volley of artistic images with subtle political messages. The back and forth that started on the streets continues to play out on Facebook, Twitter<\/a>, and blogs.<\/p>\n

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Eye-catching posters began to show up in Syria around the time the uprising began in March 2011. The first round of images was published by the al-Bashar regime and featured the phrase, \u201cI am with the law.\u201d Iterations included, \u201cwhether progressive or conservative, I am with the law,\u201d \u201cwhether boy or girl, \u2026\u201d and \u201cwhether young or old, ….\u201d Citizens were insulted by the campaign\u2019s assumption that the law was the exclusive domain of the state and that anyone opposed to the regime was outside the law. They responded initially by vandalizing the posters, but soon developed a less aggressive form of resistance. They designed their own posters with their own slogans, riffing on both \u201cI am with the law\u201d and on an updated version of the government campaign that used \u201cI am with Syria, my demands are your demands\u201d as the primary text.\u00a0 These user-generated designs\u2014ranging from \u201cI am with Syria, my demands are freedom,\u201d to increasingly humorous and satirical statements\u2014appealed to Syrians\u2019 sense of humor, beauty, and creativity rather than instigating division and bloodshed.<\/p>\n

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“I am with the law” government billboard campaign in Damascus Photo credit: Donatella Della Ratta. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license<\/p><\/div>\n

Citizen-generated versions of the posters showed up on the streets and were widely disseminated online, particularly on Facebook. In May 2011, the \u201cI am with Syria\u201d Facebook page was launched; it continues to post images and host comments. One of the resistance posters states, \u201cI am with Syria, I lost my shoes,\u201d which is a cultural reference suggesting that people have thrown their shoes at al-Bashar as an expression of their disrespect. When a man threw his shoes at George Bush in 2008,<\/a> it made global headlines. Throwing your shoe at someone is a serious insult in the Arab world. \u201cI lost my shoes\u201d is just one of the culturally rich jokes, parodies, and satirical slogans<\/a> that went viral as part of the \u201cI am with Syria\u201d Internet campaign..<\/p>\n

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Collage of remixed versions of the original posters. one reads “My was is your way but the tank is in the way” and another “I am with the law, but where is it?” Image courtesy of Ammar Alani via Donatella Della Ratta.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cI am with Syria\u201d is a playing out across the Internet like a conversation in the language of memes that gets a clear message of political resistance across, without inciting further violence in a country already ravaged by civil war. The central image of the campaign has always been an upward reaching human arm that represents an alif- the first of 28 characters in the Arabic alphabet<\/a>. Atop the alif is a hamza, (an Arabic marker equivalent to a vowel sound in English). A human hand stands in for the hamza. The hand is open in both government and citizen- inspired posters. That the counter campaign kept the open hand speaks to its central spirit and purpose. The hand could have been a fist- a classic symbol of resistance- fight the power so to speak- but this hand is extended and open, waiting for another hand to grab on and link up.<\/a>\u00a0 One of the strategies of war is to divide and fracture communities; in the case of Syria, the Internet is helping people in battle-weary communities stay connected.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWhether Anti or Pro-Regime, You Are Still My Brother..” Photo credit: http:\/\/www.tacticalmediafiles.net\/<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the context of civil war, tech-savvy and socially engaged Syrian citizens are resisting the state in creative ways. Eye-catching posters began to show up on Syrian streets around the time the uprising began in March 2011. In May 2011, citizens launched the \u201cI am with Syria\u201d Facebook page. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5508,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[53303,30080,13363,2386],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-memes","category-protests","category-social-media","category-syria"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4L9BV-5i","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5508"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":753,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328\/revisions\/753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}