Cyber Warriors in the Middle East - Syrian E-Army.pdf - DECLASSIFIED BOOKS - rc51

Public Relations Review 40 (2014) 420–428

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Public Relations Review

Cyber warriors in the Middle East: The case of the Syrian

Electronic Army

Ahmed K. Al-Rawi

Department of Media & Communication, School of History, Culture, & Communication, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

a r t i c l e

i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history:

Received 29 January 2014

Received in revised form 19 March 2014

Accepted 19 April 2014

This paper investigates the online hacking group, the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA), and

examines its goals. The study argues that it is not a hacktivist group but is made up of

cyber warriors who are closely connected to the Syrian government in order to serve two

main goals: serving as a public relations tool for the Syrian government to draw the world’s

attention to the ofﬁcial Syrian version of events taking place in the country and countering

the impact of Syrian oppositional groups. The study investigates the online reaction to SEA

by analyzing the comments posted on its YouTube videos in order to better understand the

group’s aims and strategies and the public perception.

Keywords:

Syrian Electronic Army (SEA)

Cyber War

Hacktivism

Syria

Middle East

Political public relations

“Our grandfathers liberated Syria from colonialism and we, the Syrian Electronic Army, will protect Syria from the

return of colonialism – Homeland . . . Honor . . . Loyalty”, YouTuber: samisami70835

1. Introduction: the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA)

Established around May 2011, SEA is hacking group that claims to be independent from the Syrian government of Bashar

Assad. Its old website ( syrian-es.org/ ) is not functioning anymore due to US web service restrictions ( Scharr, 2013 ). The Syrian

Computer Society, which was established by Bashar al-Assad’s brother Bassel in 1989 and was headed later by Bashar himself

before becoming president, hosted and registered SEA’s websites which indirectly show SEA’s government afﬁliation ( Scharr,

2013 ). On Instagram page ( instagram.com/ofﬁcial sea/ ), the ﬁrst image that SEA has had was that for Bashar Assad, stating:

‘Every year and you’re the nation’s leader’ (as of 9 December 2013), yet on its Twitter page, 1 SEA describes itself as follows:

“We are not an ofﬁcial side and do not belong to a political party. We are Syrian youths who responded to the call of duty after

our homeland, Syria, was subjected to cyber attacks. We decided to respond actively under the name of Syrian Electronic

Army SEA’ ( The Syrian Electronic Army, 2013 ). It seems that the Syrian government felt an urgent need to counter the various

cyber attacks against its websites, so it supported SEA. Aside from the hacking operations conducted by Anonymous, which

is one of the well-known hacktivist groups in the world that supported free speech with the release of the Wikileaks cables

and backed other popular protests like Occupy Wall Street, as explained below, other attacks included the email leaks by

Syrian opposition activists who disclosed the emails of Bashar Assad and his close aides and family members which were

E-mail addresses: alrawi@eshcc.eur.nl , ahmed@aalrawi.com

SEA has had 484 tweets and 10,183 followers as of 6 January 2014. The ﬁrst tweet was sent on 31 July 2013.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2014.04.005

A.K. Al-Rawi / Public Relations Review 40 (2014) 420–428

421

published by The Guardian ( Booth & Mahmood, 2012 ). Basically, it is impossible for SEA to operate inside the government

controlled areas without the direct knowledge of and direction from the totalitarian government of Syria. Currently, SEA’s

new website ( sea.sy/index/en ) is operated from Russia which can be conﬁrmed by the public email used which ends with

.ru. In June 2011, Bashar al-Assad praised some of his supporters and highlighted the hacking operations of SEA, which he

said “has been a real army in virtual reality” ( Scharr, 2013 ).

According to its website, SEA attributes its existence to the anti-Assad stance taken by many Arab and Western media

channels. SEA claims that these channels “started to support terrorists groups that killed civilians and members of the Syr-

ian Arab Army as well as destroying private and public properties. These media outlets functioned as an umbrella for

these groups to continue their acts by ignoring the coverage of terrorism in Syria and accusing the Arab Syrian Army

to be behind everything . . . .” ( The Syrian Electronic Army, n.d. ). It seems that SEA’s Facebook page has been routinely

and continuously removed by Facebook administrators ( The Syrian Electronic Army, 2013c ). On its 252 Facebook page

( facebook.com/SEA.252 ) 2 that has been removed during the time this study was conducted, SEA wrote in the “About” sec-

tion, three words to describe the group: ‘Homeland . . . Honor . . . Loyalty’ which is the same slogan used by Assad’s Syrian Arab

Army. By closely examining the 253rd Facebook page ( facebook.com/SEA.253 ) that was created on 10 December 10, 2013

and removed shortly afterwards, one could notice that the page was heavily moderated by its creators and it only contained

instructions on where to attack Syrian oppositional groups or report abuse or hate speech to Facebook administrators in

order to shut them down.

Another Facebook page was created and was called ‘The SEA Fourth Division’ on 5 December 2013 which has had over

2546 likes in less than ﬁve days ( facebook.com/SEA.P.252 ) and was shortly removed as well. One comment that was posted

on 10 December 2013 mentioned that the Facebook page was being reported as one that violated Facebook guidelines; the

person running the page instructed his followers to like or comment on some of its posts to avoid shutting it down, stating:

“Please don’t let me down, Shabiha”. The term Shabiha is used for the militia members that are afﬁliated with Bashar

Assad’s regime. Other instructions were directed at hacking Facebook pages or reporting abuse in relation to Facebook

pages that opposed Assad such as Al-Yarmouk Camp ( facebook.com/NewsOfYarmouk?fref=ts ) and Imam Dhahabi Divisions

( facebook.com/kalidbrkat.ahmad.1 ). Later, SEA announced on its website that its 260th Facebook page was created:

They have been hurt by the blows of the SEA, so they fought us with everything that they have and shut down our

Facebook page hundreds of times. Now, learn and let your masters learn, too. We swear that if you shut us down

millions of times, you will neither affect our determination nor perseverance. This is our arena and you know this

well. Wait for us for you who boast of freedom of speech. We do not need any funding from any side because there is

only a need to have a computer and an Internet connection

The Syrian Electronic Army (n.d.)

Since it has been involved in a conﬂict for over three years, the Syrian government uses SEA as one if its public relations

tools and cyberspace is just another battleﬁeld. In the following section, an elaboration of the concept of cyber war is given.

2. Cyber war

Information warfare or cyber war is deﬁned as ‘aggressive operations in cyberspace, against military targets, against

a State or its society’ ( Ventre, 2011, p. ix ). Many governments around the globe are concerned about their cyber security

and ability to (counter)-attack other adversaries. For example, Wikileaks cables revealed that the US government was pre-

occupied with the growing cyber technologies and capabilities of some countries like China since Japan, its close ally, was

far behind in the cyber war race ( Wikileaks, 2009 ). The US government had also discussion and some kind of cooperation

on cyber security with the Indian government ( Wikileaks, 2004 ). This kind of concern is related to many governments’

needs to obtain information that has security, economic, and political signiﬁcance as well as to protect vital technology-

related sectors from potential cyber-attacks which seem to be a regular occurrence. For example, the Algerian government

introduced a new cybercrime bill in May 2008 after reports stating that government websites received about 4000 hacking

attempts per month ( International Telecommunication Union, 2012, p. 32 ). Some of the declassiﬁed documents of the US

National Security Agency show that the US government planned to target “adversaries computers” since the year 1997.

This was known as “Computer Network Attack” (CNA) which referred to “‘operations to disrupt, deny, degrade or destroy’

information in target computers or networks, ‘or the computers and networks themselves”’ ( Richelson, 2013, paragraph 4 ).

In many cases, cyber war is envisioned to be part of and an extension of a classical war. For instance, several hacking attempts

were made against ofﬁcial Iraqi websites before the beginning of the 2003 war which resulted in defacing them and posting

anti-Baathist messages by hackers from the USA ( Al-Rawi Ahmed, 2012, p. 24 & p. 51 ). The war also led to various reactions

including the hacking of nearly 20,000 websites between mid-March and mid-April 2003 that were either for or against the

war on Iraq ( Rojas, 2003 ). It is believed that some hacking attempts against government-run websites are either supported,

indirectly encouraged, or at least tolerated by some governments. For example, an FBI informant once instructed some US

hackers like Jeremy Hammond to attack certain targets in countries that were supposed to be allies with the US like Turkey,

Iraq and Brazil ( Cameron, 2013 ).

2 The Facebook page was created on May 12, 2013 and has had 2779 likes.

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A.K. Al-Rawi / Public Relations Review 40 (2014) 420–428

According to the former secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, the US government hacked into websites run by al-Qaida’s

afﬁliates in Yemen and changed advertisements that bragged about killing Americans into pro-American advertisements

( Hughes, 2012 ). In May 2007, a cyber war was initiated in Iraq to ﬁght Iraqi insurgents. According to Bob Gourley, the

chief technology ofﬁcer for the US Defense Intelligence Agency, technology experts conducted “reconnaissance on foreign

countries without exchanging salvos of destructive computer commands” ( Harris, 2009 ). Yet, Iraqi insurgents themselves

were believed to have hacked the US Predator drone video feed in order to disclose the kind of footage captured ( Spillius,

2009 ), while other sympathizers with the Iraqi insurgency stepped up their war against US websites as a reaction against

the US invasion of Iraq. For instance, the leader of the Tarek Bia Ziad Group, who is believed to be a Libyan hacker, managed

to design a virus that infected many computers in the USA and the hacker attributed his action to his support for the Iraqi

insurgency ( Heussner, 2010 ).

Another recent example of cyber war is between Iran on the one hand and the USA and Israel on the other hand in

relation to the controversial Iranian nuclear energy program. It is believed that the USA in coordination with Israel were

allegedly involved in designing a malware, which is a malicious software, called MiniFlame whose aim is to steal information

from speciﬁc targets in Iran as well as Lebanon in which Hezbollah operates. This malware has the ability to “remotely take

screenshots of infected computers, record audio conversations that took place in the same room as the computer, intercept

keyboard inputs and wipe data on command” ( Ferran, 2012 ). Interestingly, the Flame virus that was created by the US and

Israel was also found in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE that are supposed to be close allies with the US ( Flangan,

2012 ). Further, the US and Israeli governments were allegedly involved in designing Stuxnet 0.5 back in 2005 to attack Iran’s

Natanz enrichment facility ( Arthur, 2013 ) which was followed by creating the Stuxnet worm that successfully disrupted and

delayed the work of an Iranian nuclear facility ( The Guardian, 2013; Valeriano & Maness, 2012 ). As a reaction, Iran allegedly

cyber attacked several Persian Gulf oil and gas companies in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, according to US sources ( Baldor, 2012 ).

The latest revelations by the former NSA’s contractor, Edward Snowden, showed that the US government allocated a

$652 million budget for conducting 231 offensive cyber-operations worldwide back in 2011 ( Gellman & Nakashima, 2011 ).

Teams from the FBI, the CIA and the Cyber Command, the US military cyber operations, worked with the Remote Operations

Center (ROC) to plan, administer, and supervise the work of “cyberwarriors” whose job was to “inﬁltrate and disrupt foreign

computer networks” in countries like Iran, North Korea, China and Russia ( Gellman & Nakashima, 2011 ). Other tasks included

“locating suspected terrorists ‘in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq, Somalia, and other extremist safe havens”’ ( Gellman &

Nakashima, 2011 ). Snowden’s revelations revealed numerous attempts to hack websites and computer networks in Europe

and the Middle East including Al Jazeera TV channel’s internal communications during George Bush’s second term ( Al Jazeera,

2013 ). In brief, several governments believe that obtaining sensitive online information from other countries and countering

cyber attacks are of vital importance to their national security and Assad’s government is certainly one of them.

3. Hacktivism & the Arab World

The word hacktivism is a combination of the words ‘hacker’ and ‘activist’ and was ﬁrst coined by D.E. Denning who

makes a distinction between cyberterrorism and hacktivism. Denning states that cyberterrorism refers to “the convergence

of cyberspace and terrorism. It covers politically motivated hacking operations intended to cause grave harm such as loss of

life or severe economic damage. An example would be penetrating an air trafﬁc control system and causing two planes to

collide” ( Denning, 2001, p. 241 ). On the other hand, hacktivism, refers to “operations that use hacking techniques against a

target’s Internet site with the intent of disrupting normal operations but not causing serious damage. Examples are web sit-ins

and virtual blockades, automated email bombs, web hacks, computer break-ins, and computer viruses and worms” ( Denning,

2001, p. 241 ). In fact, it is difﬁcult to distinguish between the two types of activities. The US government, for example, regards

Anonymous as an illegal online organization. According to the US government, Anonymous is made up of “not-for-proﬁt”

cyber criminals ( Snow, 2011 ) though the group is regarded by many as a hacktivist one. Weimann conﬁrms that the line

between the concepts of cyberterrorism and hacktivism is blurry as it is difﬁcult to deﬁne the action of hacktivists attacking

“national infrastructure, such as electric power networks and emergency services” ( Weimann, 2005, p. 137 ). Weimann does

acknowledge that cyberterrorism is done if some “nation states” are involved in hacking acts ( Weimann, 2005, p. 141 ) and

based on Denning’s classical deﬁnitions, the Stuxnet worm can be regarded as an act of cyberterrorism since its aim was to

“cause grave harm such as loss of life or severe economic damage”.

One of Anonymous famous operations was called Syria – Fighting for Freedom that resulted in hacking the Syrian Customs

website ( customs.gov.sy ) ( Anonymous, 2013 ). The Syrian Electronic Army reacted with hacking a Dutch website afﬁliated

with Anonymous and posted a video to announce it, stating: “Our integrity is equivalent to the integrity of our territory. If

you approached us even a little bit then you should await your complete annihilation” ( YouTube, 2012a ). One commentator

on this video, MrKilian555, said: ‘You will pay. Believe me. Expect us!’ ( YouTube, 2012a ). As a reaction, Anonymous initiated

operation #OpSyria that allegedly succeeded in exposing the names of ﬁve members of the SEA including, some of whom

live in Romania and Russia and its leader who is known as Deeb ( Murphy, 2013 ).

It is believed that Anonymous has many members from the Arab world. When the organization launched its #OpIsrael

attack in November 2012, it managed to affect about 600 Israeli sites and released personal information that belonged to

high-ranking Israeli ofﬁcials ( The Wire, 2013 ). In a newspaper interview with an Algerian member of Anonymous, he revealed

a combination of nationalistic and religious motives behind the attack on Israeli websites. The Algerian hacker claimed that

their mission was to ‘wipe Israel from the map of cyberspace’ in 2013 and that “details of over 20,000 Facebook and 5000

A.K. Al-Rawi / Public Relations Review 40 (2014) 420–428

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Twitter accounts and about 30,000 Israeli Bank accounts were released to the public” in #OpIsrael operation ( Budihan, 2013 ).

In the following section, the theoretical framework is introduced.

In this study, I argue that SEA is not a hacktivist group that defends or ﬁghts for some causes but is a community of

cyber warriors who are deﬁned as people “posses[ing] the characteristic of being sponsored by states and being subject to

the oversight of their governments” ( Baldi, Gelbstein & Kurbalija, 2003, p. 18 ). The Syrian government uses SEA as a public

relations tool to serve its own interests, while the organization’s continuous denial of its strong connection to Assad’s regime

has three main advantages. First, if SEA fails in its activities such as having its website hacked, no one can announce victory

over the Syrian government but over a small hacking Syrian group. Second, this kind of vague link between the two “gives

the Syrian government some protection from the legal and political consequences of SEA’s attacks” ( Fire Eye, 2013 ). Finally,

keeping the link to the Syrian regime ambiguous helps SEA’s organization in getting more recruits of the type of “script

kiddies” or “Thrill Seekers” who seek fame and do not want to be associated with Assad’s government but are excited to be

part of a ‘small’ organization that is sometimes able to attract the world’s attention.

It is important to note that SEA is not only made up of a group of cyber warriors who are supported by and afﬁliated

to the Syrian government, but is also aided by what is called as “patriotic hackers” ( Fire Eye, 2013 ) and “Thrill Seekers

(or “cyberjoyriders”)” (Weimann, 2006, p. 41). In fact, SEA is a highly organized group despite the fact that it claims to

work independently and with no clear organization. There is a well-deﬁned leadership and hierarchy unlike the case of

Anonymous which is made up of loosely connected networks of hackers from all over the world. For example, the TV

channel, Al-Mayadeen, interviewed the leader of SEA on 26 September 2013 ( YouTube, 2013c ). The head of SEA, who is a

young Syrian man living in Damascus, framed his group as hacktivists who are defending a cause, stating: “We have Syrian

members who live outside the country in case the Internet connection is shut down. As an organization, we are proud to

be on the same [FBI terrorist] list with that of the armed wing of Hezbollah” ( YouTube, 2013c ). This is also conﬁrmed by

Anonymous. When it initiated its #OpSyria operation, Anonymous hackers managed to disclose the identity of some SEA’s

members living in Romania and Russia and its leader who is nicknamed Deeb (means wolf in Arabic) ( Murphy, 2013 ). Finally,

the pro-Syrian TV channel, Dunya, interviewed on 23 May 2011 a young Syrian man called Tareq who claimed to be the

head of SEA and revealed that the group consists of hackers living inside the country and others in the Diaspora. Tareq

emphasized that some Syrians living abroad are helping with translating the organization’s messages in different languages

( YouTube, 2011b ). Due to this hierarchical management, I argue that SEA is an organization that clearly exhibits public

relations features serving the Syrian government for two main reasons. First, PR practitioners “must ensure their efforts

support and contribute to the overall organizational goals and values”. SEA members are performing these services for the

Assad government since they adhere to the same ideological beliefs and show great support for its political system. Second,

those practitioners must show “conﬁdence of top management in order to recommend needed adjustments to organizational

policies and procedures” ( Freitang & Stokes, 2009, p. 5 ). Again, SEA members largely act in this manner as the hierarchical

structure is well established and respected.

In relation to its direct connection to the Syrian government, Reporters without Borders identiﬁed several countries that

it called ‘Enemies of the Internet’ including Syria that uses the Syrian Electronic Army as an ofﬁcial intelligence tool. SEA is

known to use malwares to collect information on oppositional groups ( Reporters without Borders, 2013 ). These malware

programs and Trojan applications include “Blackshades, DarkComet, Fynloski, Rbot, Xtreme RAT and Zapchast” and have “key

logging, document and data stealing, and audio eavesdropping capabilities” ( Fire Eye, 2013 ). For example, SEA published the

names of 11,000 names and passwords of opposition members in July 2012 ( Reporters without Borders, 2013, p. 33 ) and

such information is sent to a “computer address lying within Syrian government-controlled Internet protocol (IP) space for

intelligence collection and review” ( Fire Eye, 2013 ). Also, SEA hacked and stole valuable information from Truecaller, Tango,

and Viber which are all free Internet messaging and telephone services that are widely used by Syrian opposition members

( Fire Eye, 2013 ).

It is important to note that most of SEA’s attacks are directed against the social media channels of traditional media outlets

and as well as against Syrian oppositional websites and Facebook pages. This means that SEA is one of Assad’s international

media and propaganda tools because after the beginning of the rebellion it has become difﬁcult for the Syrian government

to express its views to the world. There are numerous examples of SEA’s hacking operations that were mostly directed

against Qatar, Saudi Arabia, USA, and the UK due to their political opposition to Assad’s regime. These attacks included

hacking Al-Jazeera mobile and sending false mobile texts claiming that the Prince of Qatar was subjected to an assassination

attempt ( Associated Press, 2012 ). SEA also hacked the Facebook and Twitter accounts of Qatar Foundation in February 28,

2013 and posted messages indicating that Qatar supports terrorism ( YouTube, 2013b ). Tens of other media outlets like

the Washington Post, the New York Times, and The Onion or their Twitter accounts that belonged to the Associated Press,

NPR and Reuters were hacked by SEA. On the Associated Press Twitter account, SEA once wrote that the White House was

bombed and that Obama got injured which made the stock market drop ( Fire Eye, 2013; Memmot, 2013; Scharr, 2013 ).

Further, one of the Twitter accounts that belong to BBC Weather was hacked by SEA that posted some sarcastic messages

like “Earthquake warning for Qatar: Hamad Bin Khalifah about to exit vehicle” to ridicule his former obesity or “Hazardous

for warning for North Syria: Erdogan orders terrorists to launch chemical weapons at civilian areas” ( Deans, Plunkett, &

Halliday, 2013 ). Other SEA hacking operations included distributed denial of service (DDoS), phishing, and domain name

system (DNS) attacks with the case of the New York Times ( Scharr, 2013 ).

SEA’s phenomenon prompted similar reactions from other countries that are close to Bashar Assad’s regime such as

Algeria. For example, the “Algerian Electronic Army” appeared in 2013. On its Facebook page, a slogan similar to that used

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by SEA is posted: ‘Loyalty . . . .Sacriﬁce . . . Commitment’ ( The Algerian Electronic Army, 2013 ). Another hacking group was

created in 2013 called the “Tunisian Cyber Army” (TCA) ( The Tunisian Cyber Army, 2013 ). 3

4. Theoretical framework

The theory used in this study is situated within the ﬁeld of online political public relations, but it is important ﬁrst to

discuss the basic concept of public relations that is relevant to this study. In their typology of public relations, James E. Grunig

and Todd Hunt (1984) introduced four public relations models including the press agentry and the two-way asymmetric

communications. The former is a one-way communication wherein “no dialog with the intended audience is required and the

main objective is to put forward particular view of the world through the media and other channels” ( Edwards, 2009, p. 150 ).

This can be connected to the Syrian Electronic Army’s main method of addressing the public which is through its website

which does not contain any comments section. On the other hand, the aim of the two-way asymmetric communications

is to “generate agreement between the organization and its publics by bringing them around to the organisation’s way

of thinking. Feedback from publics is used to adapt communications strategies to be more persuasive, not to alter the

organsation’s position” ( Edwards, 2009, p. 150 ). This is similar to propaganda as the organization’s goal is “to change only

its target public” ( Sha, 2007, p. 8 ) rather than itself which can be seen in SEA’s use of its Twitter account, YouTube channels,

and Facebook pages wherein feedback from the public is sent but there are no changes in SEA’s strategies.

In relation to political public relations, the concept refers to “the management process by which an organization or

individual actor for political purposes, through purposeful communication and action, seeks to inﬂuence and to establish,

build, and maintain beneﬁcial relationships and reputations with its key publics to help support its mission and achieve its

goals” ( Stromback & Kiousis, 2011, p. 8 ). In the case of SEA, I argue that it is used as a political public relations tool because

it helps the Assad regime in achieving some of its goals like building relationships and enhancing its reputation inside and

outside Syria, which are some of the main functions of public relations ( Carroll & McCombs, 2003 ). In his discussion of the

image cultivation concept, Kunczik limits the goals of nation-state public relations efforts to “improving the country’s image

abroad” ( Kunczik, 2003, p. 400 ), yet in the case of SEA, the national Syrian public is also a main target. This also corresponds

with Sriramesh and Vercic’s assertion that public relations does have an inﬂuence in “maintaining a particular political

system” (2003, p. 5).

Theories on political public relations are rather new though the practice is as old as history ( Stromback & Kiousis, 2011 ).

There is also a clear overlap and convergence in the concepts with many other terms like public diplomacy ( Signitzer &

Coombs, 1992 ). Copeland and Potter assert that public diplomacy is increasingly reliant on communication and information

technologies because they are regarded as a “strategic asset that will play a more deﬁnitive role in determining the outcome

of conﬂicts” ( Copeland & Potter, 2008, p. 279 ). In fact, mediated communication in public relations is regarded as “tactical

in nature” and is one of the three strategies used in public relations aside from interpersonal communication and social

activities ( Sha, 2007, p. 9 ). Another overlap that exists is between political public relations and propaganda as early PR

theorists like Bernays, Lippman, and Lasswell admitted that persuasion and consequently propaganda are among the core

elements of public relations ( Fawkes, 2009, p. 256 ). For example, the father of public relations, Bernays , once wrote that

public relations is built on three elements: “informing people, persuading people, or integrating people with people” (1952,

p. 12). In fact, public relations functions at different levels including what is termed as the “ideological PR” which is usually

run by a state government such as the case of the Consultancy Bell Pottinger company that won 2.3 million Pounds to

promote democracy in Iraq ( L’Etang, 2008, p. 19 ). This can be linked to SEA whose objective is to serve as an ideological PR

for the Syrian government.

Another dimension that is unique to this study is that SEA uses online public relations which “involves the use of Internet

technologies to manage communications and to establish and maintain mutually beneﬁcial relationship between an orga-

nization and its key publics ( Hallahan, 2004, p. 587 ). The traditional applications of online public relations include research,

dissemination of information, queries, crisis response, discussion and debate, and relationship building. As indicated above,

the latter is regarded as an “ultimate purpose” because it assists in enhancing “positive reputations (as a prerequisite to

establishing positive relationships)” ( Hallahan, 2004, p. 591 ). One of the main reasons behind the use of online and digital

methods is that they have “the potential for developing” public relations with the publics “on a larger basis” ( Lordan, 2001;

Sweetser, 2011, p. 309 ). As SEA uses cyber technologies, its goal is to assist in Syrian government in its ongoing conﬂict by

broadening the potential support as much as possible. This study aims at answering the following research questions:

RQ1: What kind of online rhetoric and sentiments are predominantly used by the online public?

RQ2: What is the tone of the online reaction toward the videos posted by SEA on its three YouTube channels?

5. Method & results

For the purpose of this study, a webometric tool was used to mine the comments taken from three YouTube channels

( Thelwall, 2009 ): ‘syrianes0 ′ , ‘syrianes1 ′ , and ‘SEAOfﬁcialChannel’. These three channels belong to SEA since its Facebook

3 On its Twitter page, TCA has 44 followers with a ﬁrst tweet on 23 June 2013.

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