Social Media Narratives Across Platforms in Conflict: Evidence from Syria

How do representations of violent conflict differ across social media platforms? We constructed and analyzed comparable datasets of public messages and images from elite- and meso-level Syrian actors posting on three popular social media platforms. Our findings show that complementary if divergent discussions of violence remain central even amid a period of relative de-escalation. Narratives on Twitter reaching an international audience contextualize violence within the conflict’s master cleavages, while on Telegram, they address a more local audience and emphasize the violence’s day-to-day impacts. A site with stricter surveillance, Facebook features more loyalist narratives. Paired with a sample of users’ responses to an open-ended questionnaire, our results show that users across platforms diversify their presentation of violence to reach domestic and international audiences and to accommodate technical affordances, with consequences for how both audiences and researchers understand ongoing conflict.