Syrian Refugee Migration and Return on Social Media

• In Event: Forced Displacement and Return under Oppressive Regimes

Abstract

In the past ten years the Syrian civil war has resulted in the displacement of several million people now residing inside Syria as internally displaced or in neighboring countries as refugees. This paper analyzes how the widespread use of social media has recorded considerations around internal displacement and return for Syrian refugees. We use social media text and image data from three widely used platforms (Twitter, Telegram, and Facebook) to understand differences in discussion in areas with internally displaced peoples (IDPs), returnees, neither and both in northern Syria. Leveraging survey data as a source of ground truth on the presence of IDPs and returnees, we find that areas without return have a higher prevalence of violence-related discourse. Areas with return, on the other hand, feature more discussion of services and the economy. Using two-way fixed effects, we show that these same conversational differences hold pre- and post- return to an area. Furthermore, increased population displacement is positively associated with discussion of topics such as military campaigns and air strikes and negatively associated with discussion of goods and government. Using image analysis, we find that images shared in groups associated with return areas contain sales of cars, motorbikes, and goods whereas images with groups of militants, tanks and protests are more shared in areas without return. Since monitoring refugee return in war prone areas is a complex, expensive and sometimes dangerous task, the use of social media to monitor refugee and IDP discourse may provide researchers, aid groups and policymakers with tools for assessing return in areas where survey or other data is unavailable or difficult to obtain.

Authors

• Erin Elizabeth Walk, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• Kiran Kiran Garimella

• Fotini Christia, Massachusetts Institute of Technology