How Disinformation Campaigns Fueled Syria’s Worst Violence Since Al-Assad’s Fall

Security forces of Syria's new rulers have engaged in heavy fighting with fighters loyal to deposed President Bashar al-Assad in a coastal area of the country.

Fighting began Thursday after fighters loyal to the ousted al-Assad regime ambushed security forces in Jableh, in the coastal Latakia province, part of the region that forms the heartland of the Alawite minority sect to which the al-Assad family belongs. A curfew has been imposed in the cities where the fighting has broken out.

On Sunday, Syria’s transitional president, Ahmad al-Sharaa, said the developments were within “expected challenges” and called for national unity.

“We have to preserve national unity and domestic peace. We can live together,” al-Sharaa said at a mosque in Damascus.
“Rest assured about Syria. This country has the characteristics for survival… What is currently happening in Syria is within the expected challenges.”

The violence, which has reportedly killed hundreds of people, including many civilians, presents the most serious challenge yet to the new government’s authority since it took power following al-Assad’s removal in December 2024.

Syria's new government has formed a committee to investigate reported mass revenge killings of a minority group after the United Nations human rights chief called for "swift action."

Disinformation Surges in Syria After Assad’s Fall

Since the fall of the Assad regime, social media networks have seen a surge in videos spreading false or misleading information about the new administration. These videos include claims of kidnappings, sectarian violence, hate speech, and extremism.

For the first time since the 2011 uprising, Syrians have started envisioning a future beyond authoritarian rule. However, as the euphoria of this historic moment wanes, a harsher reality is taking shape.

Disinformation, once a key tool of the Assad regime to shape narratives and manipulate public opinion, did not vanish with his departure.

During Syria's civil war, rival factions used cyberspace as a weapon to influence the conflict. Now, concerns are growing that online disinformation is undermining the transition of power following the Sunni Islamist rebels' defeat of Assad in December.

In the post-Assad era, the country’s digital space is now flooded with disinformation aimed at destabilizing the fragile new order by inciting sectarian tensions.

"It has markedly increased since the fall of the Assad regime," said Zouhir Al-Shimale, a researcher and communications manager for the Syrian fact-checking organization Verify-Sy.

"Years of revolution, then civil war, have left behind deeply entrenched grievances, and various factions—both local and international—are now leveraging disinformation to strengthen their positions, delegitimize rivals, and further their own agendas," Al-Shimale told DW.

All this makes ordinary people "far more vulnerable to misinformation and disinformation, something Assad supporters, Iran, and Russia know and are exploiting," Al-Shimale added.

Al-Shimale highlighted several inauthentic Facebook pages that emerged in December, designed to mimic human rights monitoring groups. However, these accounts primarily target the Alawite community, spreading disinformation and leveraging automated fake accounts, or “bots,” to amplify false narratives. Their goal, he explained, is to instill fear among Alawites and push them toward armed resistance.

Most of the claims and videos on these accounts are “misrepresenting the facts,” he said. “They are using highly emotional and provocative messaging and content that dehumanizes minority groups and accuses the new Syrian government of orchestrating such marginalization and attacks against them.

“These networks primarily operated in the coastal parts of Syria but also across the country. It was a key tool for disseminating pro-regime content and attacking opponents of the Assad regime by framing them as terrorists or foreign agents,” he said.

These accounts could be reactivated at any time and begin to merge with the new networks identified by Al-Shimale. He said the risks of this were significant.

“These networks have the infrastructure, follower base, and operational know-how to amplify disinformation campaigns on a large scale,” he said, adding that they could “overwhelm” public debate in Syria and “ultimately destabilize” attempts at social cohesion.

Disinformation in a Fractured Digital Landscape

Disinformation campaigns in Syria leverage a variety of sophisticated methods designed to create confusion and manipulate public perception. Common tactics include imposter content, the miscontextualization of information, and deceptive practices involving social media accounts, such as creating new profiles or repurposing older pages under different names.

Verified accounts on X and Facebook, for instance, amplify false narratives, with visibility algorithms prioritizing their content over credible yet unverified sources.

Telegram, known for its emphasis on anonymity, hosts channels that disseminate fabricated announcements and manipulated narratives, taking advantage of the platform’s minimal oversight.

Meanwhile, WhatsApp presents distinct challenges, as its private group chats remain largely inaccessible to fact-checkers and moderators. Misinformation and disinformation circulate rapidly within these closed networks, where their spread is amplified by the inherent trust in personal connections.

A recent investigation by Misbar has uncovered a network of suspicious accounts that have been highly active on social media platforms following the collapse of the Syrian regime. These accounts, created in close proximity to the regime's downfall, propagate hate speech and incite sectarian violence, exacerbating divisions within Syrian society during a critical juncture.

Among the most prominent accounts identified by Misbar is "Syrian Coast Observatory," an anonymous account followed by several Israeli-linked profiles.

This account promotes the idea of establishing autonomous regions for the Alawite community in Syria. Another account, "Alawite Citizen," has published posts advocating for the creation of an independent Alawite region within Syria. These calls align with a broader campaign aimed at fostering sectarian divisions, using rhetoric that incites violence and territorial fragmentation.

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