Inside Syria’s year of rule by hashtag

It took barely a year for Syria to shift from a state run through security checkpoints, intelligence reports and the ever-present fear of regime thugs, into a nation managed – almost proudly – via a “black screen” and a hashtag that rises and falls like a heart-rate monitor. 

In twelve months, Syrian politics has begun to resemble a live TV competition. The government announces a decision; the public votes on Facebook and X;  officials watch the numbers climb or collapse, then emerge to declare – with perfect confidence – that this was their plan all along. And if not, the public simply “misunderstood.” Cue apology. Cue new hashtag.

In this new era, the “trend” has become the only authority that matters. No constitution. No parliament. No institutional process. No five-year plans. Everything begins with a hashtag and ends with an official "response."

Soon after the fall of Assad, the presidential palace opened its doors to welcome “ordinary Syrians.” Actually, it was to host influencers flown in from across the world to broadcast the image of a “liberated homeland” to their followers. That backfired. A wave of public anger erupted, mourning the loss of the palace’s dignity. Within days the doors were shut again. Offending the hashtag public was no longer an option.

Then came the Media Minister, who generated a healthy number of trends through a cascade of photo-ops, declarations, and gaffes. He set the stage for Syria’s first-ever Influencers’ Conference. The criteria for participation were clear: not expertise, not knowledge, but follower count. The more followers someone had, the more important they became, and the greater their favour with the minister!

Among the defining spectacles of this period is the emergence of the mukawi‘een – the “U-turners”. They are the sudden converts who switched colours overnight: from red flags to green ones, from denouncing the revolution to celebrating its victory.

They know little about the uprising itself: its chronology, its sacrifices, its losses. They ignore the blood of the dead, sidestep the question of the detainees and disappeared, and slip into spaces once held by those who stood against tyranny. Small wonder that many Syrians treat them with ridicule. Activists began producing explanatory videos and campaigns – “Revolution 101” – to remind these latecomers what the struggle actually was about.

Yet the U-turners have discovered their political voice. They hold no official mandate, but speak with the swagger of defence ministers and pass judgment with the certainty of constitutional judges. Overnight, they are treated as stakeholders. The government has not confined them to the comic margins, but has started to take them seriously, reading their reactions as political signals and treating them as an informal channel between state and society.

Among the year’s most viral sagas was that of Mira and Ahmed. As families in the coast and in Sweida raised the alarm about kidnapped women, Mira was believed to have been one of them. It later emerged she had simply eloped to marry her lover. The couple resurfaced as influencers, their follower count skyrocketing as the genuine plight of abducted women was eclipsed by a love story turned media circus.

Repeated incidents only deepened the confusion. Government ministries launched investigations and released reports, yet public debate was consumed by the theatrical saga of Mira and Ahmed, not the fate of real victims whose cases were buried beneath the noise. They were not the only ones who dragged Syrians into gladiatorial combat inside the arena of national “trending”.

This past year, Syria has lived through a frenzy of live fundraising campaigns, each province launching its own initiative. Millions of dollars were raised – and millions more spent – on an endless stream of public celebrations: unveiling the new national visual identity, rejoicing over sanctions expected to be lifted, celebrating foreign investment, celebrating new police cars, and countless other “events.” Each campaign triggered its own wave of competing hashtags, splitting the public into digital cheerleaders or hecklers.

The Minister of Culture even managed to turn himself into a nationwide hashtag after reciting a poem during his swearing-in ceremony and earning the nickname “Mr Dignity Plate”, a label likely to haunt him for years.

Since the collapse of the previous regime in December 2024, Syria has stumbled from an age of fear to an age of noise. Syrians no longer whisper behind doors; they shout into cameras, phones, and posts. Everyone is talking: loyalists, opposition supporters, the undecided, the furious, even those who once considered politics irrelevant but are now enjoying the free speech.

The new government learned quickly: don’t take decisions before consulting “the public”. That's to say, anyone who is online with time, signal, and enough battery to unleash a comment storm.