During the 2011 uprisings across the SWANA region, the development of new media technologies and the work of diaspora activists played pivotal roles in amplifying demands for political change. In Syria, where the revolution ultimately led to the recent fall of the al-Assad regime, members of the diaspora have been deeply involved in sustaining calls for freedom and justice. Yet even as media became essential tools for mobilization and visibility, the wider processes of mediatization introduced new challenges, and little is known about how Syrians abroad navigated this complex and rapidly shifting media landscape.
This book investigates the media practices of Syrian diaspora communities and examines how they engage with both the possibilities and limitations of contemporary media technologies. Drawing on interviews with Syrians in Denmark, Sweden, and Germany, combined with digital ethnography, it explores the intersections between media practices, diasporic political activism, evolving narratives of the revolution, and the multifaceted ties to Syria shaped by violence, nostalgia, and hopes for a better future.
By foregrounding bottom-up processes of mediatization, the study highlights the challenges facing Syrian diaspora activists, including the hardships of displacement, transnational repression, information overload, and internal fragmentation within the opposition movements. It offers a nuanced analysis of emerging cultures of information and political engagement, as well as the ambiguous feelings of belonging and the shifting notions of “home” among Syrians living in diaspora.
Table of Contents:
List of Figures and Tables – Preface – Acknowledgements – List of Abbreviations – Transliteration, Translation and Pseudonyms – Glossary – Introduction – The Syrian Mediascape and the Migration Framework – Life in Diaspora – Media Practices, Memories, and Mistrust – Political Activism in Diaspora – Demobilization and the Deterrence of Activism – Negative Impacts of the Mediatization Processes – Appendices – Index
About the Author :
Zenia Henriksen is a researcher focused on the SWANA region, media, and migration, and holds a PhD from the University of Copenhagen. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Southern Denmark. With a particular emphasis on modern Syria, her research examines how media representations shape identity formation, belonging, and political legitimacy within Syria and its diasporic communities in Europe.
Review :
With a strong theoretical setup and a rich empirical material Dr. Henriksen's study brings novel insight to the challenging existence of the Syrian diaspora.
In particular, the book demonstrates the complexities of political activism in our present mediatized world in which both news media and social media connect and disconnect people in various ways. Highly recommended.
—Stig Hjarvard, Professor, Ph.D., University of Copenhagen
Understanding the complexity and transnational facets of media use in exile is important for multicultural societies of today. Zenia Yonus Henriksen’s impressive ethnographic fieldwork allows a deep dive into the everyday media practices and political identity formation of Syrians in Europe. This book is a key resource for students and scholars aiming to learn about media in exile in general, as well as for those that try to make sense of the uncertain future of Syria and the role the diaspora may play in it.
—Carola Richter, Professor for international communication, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany
As Syria enters a post-Assad future, it is essential to understand how Syrians experienced years of revolution and war. Zenia Henriksen takes us deep into the emotional lives of Syrians displaced to Europe, revealing how traditional and new media not only facilitated activism but also increasingly led to political demobilization by enabling misinformation, saturation, fragmentation, digital repression, and a ceaseless circulation of violent imagery that exacted a heavy psychological toll. With sensitivity and nuance, this insightful work elucidates the complexities of mediatization, with important implications for Syria and beyond.
—Wendy Pearlman is the Jane Long Professor of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern University and author of The Home I Worked to Make: Voices from the New Syrian Diaspora (2024)
The study lays bare that, quite ironically, in the years preceding the current system change in Syria, a considerable part of the Syrian opposition, which had fled to Europe, abstained from political debates in the digital realm because of fear of surveillance by the Asad regime. This process of 'demobilization', brilliantly documented by the author, is proof of the fact that the digital age is not always conducive to democratic transformations and that older types of (face-to-face) communication can sometimes be more important for opposition forces.
—Kai Hafez, Prof. Dr., International and Comparative Media and Communication Studies, University of Erfurt, Germany
In this pathbreaking account of (de)mobilization among exiled Syrian dissidents in Europe, Zenia Henriksen moves deftly between the online and the offline, the intimate and the political, and the local and the transnational. Mediatization of a Revolution explores efforts to foster and sustain solidarity, distinguish truth from falsity, seek justice for war crimes, and imagine a post-conflict future for Syria. Richly theorized and carefully contextualized, this work illustrates both the affordances, and the limitations, of media for diaspora activism.
—Christa Salamandra (DPhil/PhD), Professor and Deputy Chair of Anthropology, Lehman College
