Assad on Instagram Vies With Rebel Videos to Seek Support

Even in the middle of a civil war, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has made time to hold hospital patients’ hands while his blue-jeaned wife helps in soup kitchens. At least, that’s how Syria appears on Assad’s account with Instagram, the photo-sharing website.

From the narratives of Thucydides and Homer to UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s World War II radio orations to videos of Syrian civilians gasping for breath on Google’s YouTube, the media have always been tools of statecraft, stagecraft and war. Now Facebook and its Instagram application, Twitter and 24-hour cable news are leveling the playing field among nations, boosting the role of public opinion and accelerating the tempo of war and diplomacy. Assad, always impeccably attired, appeared in an interview that aired on Fox News, and he uses Instagram to appeal to his supporters and counter President Barack Obama’s portrayal of him as a bloodthirsty dictator. Russia’s Foreign Ministry uses Twitter, newspapers and television to oppose US action in Syria. Iran’s new president, Hassan Rohani, is using social media, as well as an NBC interview broadcast, to portray himself as a moderate successor to the erratic Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. “Governments have always used media” in conflicts, said Christopher Steinitz, a Middle East analyst at CNA Strategic Studies, a policy group in Alexandria, Virginia. “Now social media are amplifying those dynamics. It’s a force multiplier,” Steinitz said, using military terminology. Ross said the Assad regime is making sophisticated use of media by deploying propagandists; cyber-warriors such as the Syrian Electronic Army, which has hacked US newspaper websites including that of the New York Times; and public-relations experts who orchestrate Assad’s TV appearances.