Abstract
Brownlee focuses on Syrian women in the media since the beginning of the civil war in 2011. Women’s contributions there have often been sidelined or belittled. However, recently major steps in acknowledgement have been made thanks to empowering tools such as the new media and the internet. The internet is proving able to help in the renegotiation of gender relationships by virtue of its nature, offering a “speaker’s corner” to everyone. This chapter considers how new media presents an immense potentiality for women as a forum for the exchange of ideas, a way to gain a public platform for advancement and empowerment, a medium that overcomes barriers of distance and time for education, and as a tool to overcome sectarianism.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsBibliography
“Assad’s Lionesses: the female last line in the battle for Syria.” The Independent. January 22, 2013. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/assads-lionesses-the-female-last-line-in-the-battle-for-syria-8462221.html (accessed July 12, 2014).
“Bahrain student jailed for year over protest poem.” The Guardian. June 12, 2011. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jun/12/bahrain-student-jailed-protest-poems (accessed June 29, 2014).
“The Role of Social Media in Arab Women’s Empowerment.” Arab Social Media Report 1, no. 3 (November 2011), http://www.arabsocialmediareport.com/UserManagement/PDF/ASMR%20Report%203.pdf (accessed June 29, 2014).
“Syria: Activist Rima Dali Arrested in Damascus for Calling for End to Killing.” Global Voices. April 9, 2012. http://globalvoicesonline.org/2012/04/09/syria-activist-rima-dali-arrested-in-damascus-for-calling-for-end-to-killing/ (accessed July 10, 2014).
“Syria. The Free Women of Derayya.” Global Voices. December 20, 2013. http://globalvoicesonline.org/2013/12/20/syria-the-free-women-of-darayya/ (accessed July 11, 2014).
“Syrian ‘Peace Brides’ Forcibly Disappeared.” Amnesty International. December 7, 2012. http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/MDE24/090/2012/en/d2884e05-59a2-4337-90ef-47d94748a376/mde240902012en.html (accessed August 20, 2014).
“Syrian woman human rights attorney still missing from Damascus.” Women News Network, December 4, 2013. http://womennewsnetwork.net/2014/01/18/syrian-woman-rights-attorney/ (accessed July 11, 2014).
“Video: No Syrian Women were invited to the peace talks—watch them speak up.” Your Middle East. February 13, 2014. http://www.yourmiddleeast.com/videos/video-no-syrian-women-were-invited-to-the-peace-talks-watch-them-speak-up_21586 (accessed July 9, 2014).
“Who’s who: Razan Zaitouneh.” The Syrian Observer. August 19, 2013. http://www.syrianobserver.com/Opposition/Opp_Who/Whos+who+Razan+Zaitouneh (accessed July 02, 2014).
“The women of Salamiyah turn Houses into Protest Squares.” Syria Untold. May 10, 2014. http://www.syriauntold.com/en/story/2014/05/10/9375 (accessed July 09, 2014).
“Women Organizing to Survive: Syria’s Civil Society and Beyond.” Thomson Reuters Foundation. July 5, 2013. http://www.trust.org/item/20130705155822-kqita/ (accessed August 30, 2014).
Al-Aous, Yahya. “Feminist Websites and Civil Society Experience.” in Syrian Voices from Pre-Revolution Syria: Civil Society Against all Odds, The Hague: HIVOS, 2013.
Al-Shamahi, Abubakr., “Tawakkol Karman: Nobel Prize Laureate”, Al-Jazeera English, October 9, 2011. http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/10/201110813924645224.html (accessed June 29, 2014).
Baiazy, Amjad, “Syria’s Cyber Wars.” Media Policy. January 2013. https://www.academia.edu/3555530/Syria_Cyber_Wars (accessed August 23, 2014).
Brownlee, Billie Jeanne and Ghiabi, Maziyar “Passive, Silent and Revolutionary: the Arab Spring Revisited”. Paper presented at SeSamo Conference 2015, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Italy, January 15–17, 2015.
Chaudhri, Nupured. Contesting Archives: Finding Women in the Sources. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2010.
Davidson, Tina, and Pierson, Ruth. “Voices from the Margins: Subaltern Women Speak… and Rewrite History.” Journal of Women’s History 13(2) (2001): 169–179. doi: 10.1353/jowh.2001.0045 (accessed August 24, 2014).
Edemariam, Aida. “Syrian writer Samar Yazbek: a woman like me makes life difficult.” The Guardian. October 13, 2012. http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/oct/13/interview-samar-yazbek-syria-revolution (accessed July 11, 2014).
El- Baghdadi, Iyad. “Meet Asma Mahfouz and the Vlog that Helped Spark the Revolution.” YouTube uploaded February 1, 2011. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgjIgMdsEuk (accessed June 29, 2014).
Gabriel, Jane. “Syria Women’s Rights: The fight does not stop here.” openDemocracy, December 8, 2008. http://www.opendemocracy.net/audio/syrian-womens-rights-the-fight-does-not-stop-here (accessed April 03, 2014).
Ghazzawi, Razan. “Seeing the women in revolutionary Syria.” openDemocracy, April 8, 2014. http://www.opendemocracy.net/arab-awakening/razan-ghazzawi/seeing-women-in-revolutionary-syria (accessed June 9, 2014).
Khamis, Sahar. “Islamic feminism in new Arab media: platforms for self-expression and sites for multiple resistances.” Journal of Arab and Muslim Media Research 3(3) (2010): 237–255. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1386/jammr.3.3.237_1 (accessed August 20, 2014).
Labaki, Nadine (film). Where Do We Go Now? France: Les Films des Tournelles, 2011.
Malsin, Jared. “Portrait of an Artist: Razan Ghazzawi, the Syrian Blogger Turned Exile.” Time. April 2, 2013. http://world.time.com/2013/04/02/portrait-of-an-activist-meet-razan-ghazzawi-the-syrian-blogger-turned-exile/ (accessed July 11, 2014).
Omar, Karima. “National Symbolism in Construction of Gender: Transformed Symbols in Post-Conflict States.” Seton Hall’s Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations 5(1) (2004): 49–67.
Pontecorvo, Gillo (film).The Battle of Algiers. Rome: Rizzoli, 1996.
Radsch, Courtney. “Arabic Twitter stars come face to face in Cairo.” Women’s E-News. January 26, 2012. http://womensenews.org/story/media-stories/120125/arabic-twitter-stars-come-face-face-in-cairo#.VAHfOmPgV7k (accessed August 30, 201).
Radsch, Courtney, and Khamis, Sahar. “In Their Own Voice: Technologically Mediated Transformation among Young Arab Women.” Feminist Media Studies 3: (2013), 881–890. doi: 10.1080/14680777.2013.838378 (accessed August 30, 2014).
Sadawi, Nawal. “Waging War on the Mind.” Paper presented at the World Social Forum 2004, Mumbai, India, January 16–21, 2004.
Sawah, Wael. “The Dialect Relationship between the Political and the Civil in the Syrian Society Movement.” Arab Reform Initiative 34 (2009). http://www.arab-reform.net/dialectic-relationship-between-political-and-civil-syrian-civil-society-movement (accessed April 7, 2014).
Shaery-Eisenlohr, Roschanack and Cavatorta, Francesco, “The Internet and Civil Activism in Syria.” In Civil Society in Syria and Iran, ed. Paul Aarts and Francesco Cavatorta, 126–132. London: Lynne Rienner, 2013.
Spivak, Gayatri C. “Can Subaltern Speak?” In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, 271–313.Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988.
Syrian Women for the Syrian Intifada. Facebook page. Accessed July 12, 2014. http://ivrytwr.com/2012/04/11/how-to-cite-facebook.Tamer, Zakaria. Breaking Knees. Translated by Ibrahim Muhawi. Reading: Garnet Publishing, 2008.
Trafieh, Hanadi, “Women’s Rights, Gender and ICTs in Syria.” GISWatch, 2013. http://www.giswatch.org/en/country-report/womens-rights-gender/syria (accessed July 1, 2014).
Vince, Natalya. “Saintly grandmothers: youth reception and reinterpretation of the national past in contemporary Algeria.” The Journal of North African Studies 18(1) (2013), 32–50. doi: 10.1080/13629387.2012.728049 (accessed July 11, 2014).
Weaver, Matthew. “Isis declares caliphate in Iraq and Syria.” The Guardian. June 30, 2014. http://www.theguardian.com/world/middle-east-live/2014/jun/30/isis-declares-caliphate-in-iraq-and-syria-live-updates (accessed July 12, 2014).
Wieland, Carsten. Syria. A Decade of Lost Chance. Seattle: Cune Press, 2012.
Yacoub Oweis, Khaled. “Syrian Actress Treads New Stage in Syrian Protests.” Reuters. January 5, 2013. http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/01/05/us-syria-actress-idUSTRE8040WQ20120105 (accessed July 10, 2014).
Yazbek, Samar. A Woman in the Crossfire. Translated by Max Weiss. London: Haus Publishing, 2012.
York, Jillian C. “Why Syria’s arrested blogger, RazanGhazzawi, is one of my heroes.” The Guardian. December 5, 2011. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/dec/05/syria-arrested-blogger-razan-ghazzawi (accessed July 11, 2014).
Syrian Women for the Syrian Intifada. Facebook page. Accessed July 12, 2014. Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Brownlee, B.J. (2017). Revolutionary Damascene Roses: Women and the Media in the Syrian Conflict. In: Maestri, E., Profanter, A. (eds) Arab Women and the Media in Changing Landscapes. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62794-6_13
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62794-6_13
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-62793-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-62794-6
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)