New Media And Syria Social Transformation

Syria Arab Republic is one of the most influential countries in the Middle East, while, it is a developing country experienced colonial times. In July 2000, Bashar became a Syrian President who stepped after his father Al-Assad. Then he took the reforms on the political, social, and economic and etc. However, these reforms have not fundamentally changed the Syrian authoritarian structure.In 2010, the spark of the "Arab spring" campaign quickly burned the Middle East and the whole world. In January 2011, the peaceful Syrian protests were cracked down brutally by the government of authorities. Under Syria strictly-controlled media environment, Syria’s young people took up the cameras, mobile phones, computers and other communication tools to record the process of the social movement, then uploaded to the new media platform to report and spread information. The formation of the new media ecology in Syria set up.This paper takes the interdisciplinary perspective, and adopts the theory of "network society" of Castells and the relations between social movement and new media of Zhao Dingxin. The paper elaborated the relations between new media and social movement, technology liberation and empowerment, new media and social transformation on Syria Upspring which based on the study method of literature review. The study has a significant implication on the new media development in the Middle East and developing countries.